


Cartography

by forthemyoui



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2018-10-21 08:41:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10681719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthemyoui/pseuds/forthemyoui
Summary: Stablehand Momo gets caught up in a deal with the Myoui princess at a treacherous time, when all the great political manipulators are converging in the kingdom of Ardith and talking about old ghosts.





	1. Green

"Whoa, boy," Momo struggles to get the harness onto the pure black stallion as it rears upwards; she steps backwards to avoid getting a muzzle in the face.

There isn't anyone around before the evening rounds of feeding, but someone leaps up and grabs Romeo's face, bringing him down swiftly.

"Down, boy," the young lady says, smoothing her palm over the horse’s cheek and mimicking his snorts to calm him down.

When the lady turns, Momo gets the fright of her life. "Milady."

"If you want to get the harness on him, you'll have to open his stall gate. He gets a bit nervous if people put their hands on him in an enclosed space," Mina says calmly, stroking Romeo's face with her knuckles in confident movements. "Also, you might want to get to know the horses a little better before sneaking a ride. Might get yourself hurt all alone."

"I wasn't, milady," Momo mumbles, unsure of whether to reach for Romeo's face and the half-attached harness. "I was supposed to test the fittings for the new harnesses. He bit and tore at his old ones."

Momo has never seen someone so beautiful or at home with the horses, but the conflicted expression that flickers across Mina's face for a quick moment wakes her from her stupor.

"He's just getting old and acquiring a temper," Mina says. "He used to be mine. Until I was disallowed from riding."

"Why?" Momo asks, shifting in her boots and getting startled when Mina turns to her, hands still on the horse, and looks straight into her eyes.

"You're quite bold for a stablehand," Mina says; Momo finds it difficult to ascertain her tone.

"I mean, why, milady?" Momo asks again.

A soft smile reaches Mina's lips. "Just that you ask questions and wonder about me is a bold statement enough. Are you new?"

"To the stable? Yes," Momo says, and then adds 'milady' when she realises she's forgotten again. "I used to work in the kitchen, but there were some... problems. They shifted me here."

"Do those problems have something to do with how poorly you greet nobility?" Mina asks with a quietly smug look on her face; Momo half-lets herself believe the princess is teasing her.

"Maybe," Momo says, "milady."

As Momo steps backwards, the pouch loosely fastened to her side rustles up against the stall pillar and ruptures at the opening. Momo watches, thinking 'bloody hell', as a day's worth of bread rolls, smoked hams, and fruits topple to the hay-covered ground.

Mina gasps. "You thief!"

Momo falls to her knees and bows her head. "I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it, milady!"

"Oh my gosh, get up," Mina chides and actually grabs Momo by the arm. "Do you want the horse to trample on you? Did they give you any proper training?"

"I don't think they're keen on re-training servants, milady," Momo says guardedly as she gets up. "I'm sorry, I won't steal again. You can send me out now."

"I'm not sending you out," Mina says measuredly, looking like she's thinking for a moment. "Is this the sort of trouble the kitchen was having?"

Momo thinks for a moment and realises things can't get worse from here. She nods glumly. Mina almost laughs at her remorseless sulking.

"You were trying to sneak out after all, weren't you?" Mina asks. "Though it looks like you weren't packed for a long journey. Did you even tell me the truth about Romeo and his harnesses?"

"I did!" Momo cries. "I mean, I did, milady. I would never lie about the horses. They're good pets. I was fitting on a new harness, but I was also sneaking out. I wasn't going to run away either, so don't concern yourself with that, milady."

Mina hums, kicking at hay with her one-size-too-small riding boots as she decides what to do with a disobedient servant. "So you were going out on a walk with the horse?"

"A picnic."

"A picnic?"

Momo nods dumbly. "A picnic, milady."

"Fine. A picnic it is."

Momo watches in utter surprise as Mina reaches up and smoothly fastens the bridle and bit onto Romeo's head. The horse whickers and nuzzles into Mina's hands in a way Momo initially thought impossible.

"What are you doing standing around?" Mina asks. "Pick up the food and get a horse."

"But milady, I can only take out this horse because he's been put in an out-of-the-way stall. One glance from the stablemaster and he'll know if a horse in the main stall area is missing."

Mina looks as if she's finally seeing the older, slightly worn, and lonely stall for what it is, and sighs softly. "Okay, we'll both ride Romeo."

Momo kneels to pick up the food, re-encasing it in the wax paper she'd used for packaging. Her heart is unsteady, her palms sweaty, and her head reeling from the events and the sudden notice that there would be a royal intruder on her picnic. This has to be a felony in the royal court, or some minor charge must be attached to riding off into the sunset with the princess.

Momo steps onto a box and mounts the horse behind Mina. The princess is in a loose blouse and pants, probably considered too intimate a set of attire for servant eyes. Momo doesn't know where to put her hands.

"Why am I sitting behind you, milady?" Momo asks.

"I don't suppose you're familiar with riding?" Mina asks, and Momo swears a teasing tone entered her voice just then.

Momo frowns as Mina taps the reins and Romeo stalks out of the stall in his usual moody gait.

"Hey, I've taken him out twice."

"And that's a feat?" Mina asks.

Momo widens her eyes as Romeo jerks forward and has no other choice but to grab onto the princess' waist. She feels and hears Mina's sharp intake of breath but doesn't acknowledge it.

"He's been having issues with all the stablehands," Momo argues. "He hasn't let anyone take him on a ride. I knew that if I wanted to go out, I'd have to tame the one left in the furthest stall."

Mina turns a little to eye Momo. "He's your escape route?"

"Hey," Momo says, straight-faced, "he looked like he wanted some exercise too, okay. He just doesn't know how else to say it except with moody grunts."

Mina lets a smile slip onto her face, but that disappears and changes into shock as Momo suddenly puts her hands on hers and jerks the reins roughly. Romeo jerks in response, too, but turns as instructed.

"Don't be rough with him," Mina admonishes her. "Also, I'm steering."

Momo rolls her eyes. "Gosh, princess, I'd let you, but you were going in the wrong direction."

"Oh," Mina quietens as she realises she'd been steering Romeo towards the riding pasture and pebbled walk, the only places she's ever known to take him. "Where were you going to have your picnic?"

"There's a nice clearing with a creek just a little ways through the forest," Momo says, calmly steering Romeo down a less-trod path behind the stables; they lower their heads as they pass castle-grown trees and approach a thick of trees.

"Can we get back in an hour?" Mina asks, excited but suddenly anxious.

"An hour is unrealistic, but the stablehands shouldn't do their checks till eight, which gives us three hours."

Mina shakes her head quickly. "I have to be back for dinner."

Momo frowns, thinking. "Wait, did you also sneak out?"

"Does the stablemaster tell you nothing?" Mina asks. "'Princess isn't allowed to ride anymore. She knows all she needs to make an entrance on horseback. Any more than that is unbecoming of a lady' and all that."

Momo suddenly sits up straight and takes her chin off Mina's shoulder (when did that get there?!). "Right, milady. I-"

"You're putting on the formalities again? I thought you were going to take your liberties with 'princess' and all that," Mina interrupts, putting a hand on Romeo's neck to calm him for a steep decline into the lush green forest surrounding the royal estate.

Momo turns red, embarrassed. "I didn't realise, milady. I use that as a term of, uh, patronising endearment."

Mina only hums in response, and then sighs, remembering her predicament. "I'll be in trouble."

"Should we turn back, milady?" Momo asks.

"I don't quite want to," Mina admits. "I haven't seen the forest. I suppose I'll just walk right through the main doors and get my scolding."

"Don't you do the 'I was sick in bed' thing, ahem, milady?" Momo asks cautiously, patting Romeo's rump as he skitters at the bramble marking the entrance to the clearing.

"How could I?"

"Would you want to climb back up to your quarters, milady?" Momo asks, hoping she doesn't get slapped by royalty; her job is very much in danger as things are. "I know how to climb the north wing where most of the royal quarters are."

"We'll think about that later," Mina says as she pulls on the reins and steers Romeo out of the bramble bush; the sudden movement of the horse makes Momo slam straight into Mina and her arms wrap themselves around Mina's waist.

"Hey, this is the way!" Momo exclaims.

"Not if you make him go through bramble," Mina says sharply.

"The other way is much longer-"

"I'm already getting into trouble, we can afford to take 'longer'."

Momo doesn't argue with that. When they finally get to the clearing, Momo gets off the horse and helps Mina off as well. She stares at Romeo's legs and marvels at there not being a single scratch. Cut by a bit of guilt, she reaches into the satchel and pulls out an apple for Romeo.

"He likes-"

"Green ones," Momo finishes. "I know. The kitchen was out."

Mina, standing in one of the most beautiful clearings or scenes of nature, stares incredulously at Momo's face as if it's the most interesting thing there is to look at. When she finally looks away, though, the scene is still breathtaking.

The castle grounds are filled with an artificial green, a product of manicured orchards and well-kept grassy areas. The forest was deep and dark, and the clearing is a soft, lighter shade, and there are tiny purple flowers littered across the landscape.

Momo smiles, and belatedly thinks that she's always wanted to bring someone here but had no one to, and now the princess is here. An unexpected gift, she imagines.

She watches Mina walk and prance and wander all while she flattens a patch of grass and spreads out a small woven roll. She sets her pouch of food on the mat and sits to wait for the girl.

Mina turns. "This is nice."

Momo grins. "Isn't it?"

"No 'milady'?"

"Uh, milady!" Momo adds.

"I'm kidding," Mina says. "Drop it entirely. Wait, no, not entirely. I still want some authority in this situation."

Momo watches in silence as Mina sits down, cross-legged, and pulls off her riding boots. They look markedly too small for her feet, and Momo guesses that it's because she hasn't been allowed to ride in a long time.

Mina pulls apart a hunk of ham and chews slowly, looking almost pensive. Momo doesn't eat until she is offered a piece. When she notices that Mina is watching something, she turns to look and sees Romeo.

"I'm sorry about the bramble, milady."

"It's fine," Mina says, clipped. "You're probably giving him more than the other stablehands do. Better to scratch yourself up and see the world than be unscathed and not, right?"

"Very philosophical, milady," Momo smiles teasingly. "Still, there was an alternative path and I chose to be impatient and selfish."

"I'm a pretty impatient and selfish person too," Mina says gruffly. "I like to get what I want."

"Not with Romeo," Momo says.

"Hmm, not with things and people I care about, usually?" Mina says. "He was mine, you know. They got him for me. He was supposed to be mine for all of time, but they thought I was too interested in riding and it was too rough of a hobby for a princess."

Momo nods, breaking bread as Mina motions for her to do so. She passes a small piece to Mina.

"I loved him. I still do. But I see now that I've been selfish with him. I told them to never let anyone touch or ride my horse. And now he's become that. A disgruntled domesticated horse without an owner."

Momo's eyes widen. "He wasn't always brooding?"

Mina laughs. "Of course he always had an attitude. But he was more spirited then, and he definitely wouldn't have caused too much trouble for anyone."

"He was happy," Momo re-phrases as they watch Romeo graze. "But still had his personality with him."

Mina chews on her piece of bread and swallows. It's her first time having bread without spread, but she doesn't say a thing about it.

"Thanks for being his companion," Mina says. "No matter whether it was allowed or not. He needed you."

Momo shrugs. "He still seems to love you. You have a way with him."

"Maybe," Mina says quietly, "but I've also never seen him let someone guide him so well."

"Thank you, milady."

Mina rolls her eyes and, as the sun sets behind them, moves closer to Momo. She grabs Momo by her dusty stablehand uniform and drags her closer.

"Look, this is the most personal conversation I've had with anyone in the longest time," Mina says curtly, and Momo tries not to think 'and your choice of topic is horses?!' and listens. "Just drop the 'milady', would you? You can call me by my name."

When Momo doesn't say anything, Mina urges her on. "Come on. You know my name. You know at least that. Everyone knows my name. You can say it if you want."

Momo half-thinks Mina is desperate for someone to call her by her name, to reach into Mina's personal space and claim a spot as their own. Momo is certain Romeo isn't the only being looking for company, or a friend.

"Mina."

Mina closes her eyes as she hears her name being spoken. "Yes. Can I know yours?"

With a bloody stablehand too, Mina thinks, then chides herself for being snooty and stuck up. She almost revels in the delight of speaking to someone that doesn't have gold stuck up their arse from all their immense wealth.

"My name is Momo," Momo says, because usually people don't ask either unless it's to attach a name to a gigantic scolding.

"Momo," Mina repeats, and then lets go of Momo's tunic.

"Yeah."

"It's late. We should go back."

"Finish your food, Mina," Momo says and picks up the last few grapes, presenting them to the princess.

Mina, startled but again pleased to have her name said aloud, receives the fruits and puts them in her mouth. Her name verbalised is like a bell of recognition, not a bell of self-absorbment, but the sort of gently resonant pleasure from the world whispering a response to your being alive.

"Thanks for this, Momo," Mina says.

Romeo isn't at a jittery or startled when they mount. They ride into the forest again, Momo telling herself that she should have shown Mina the creek; there probably isn't going to be another opportunity.

They don't get back at eight after all, but at a safe seven, when dinner is usually underway. Mina's parents should have started fuming by now.

When they enter the stable grounds, Mina instinctively tugs on the reins such that Romeo hesitates and trots on the spot.

"What the hell is that?" Momo wonders out loud, then recognises the carriages for what they are, approaching the grassless areas to be parked. "God, I don't get notices for visitors anymore since I'm not household staff."

Mina curses when she sees and recognises the sigil. "Shit, they're here. They're visiting from a nrighbouring kingdom."

"Is it the house of Wang?" Momo asks.

"Good Lord, no," Mina whispers, "it's people who are far more tolerable and important."

"Go, then," Momo urges.

Mina dismounts quickly and Momo does the same. Momo doesn't know how to conclude this… getaway, so she just stands and motions for Mina to leave. Mina seems like she herself is trotting on the spot, having an intense dilemma, before she leans in to kiss Momo's cheek and flees.

Everything in Momo is screaming and on fire and everything in Mina is the same, only burning seven hells brighter. She almost wants to slap herself for kissing a scruffy stablehand and at the same time is handling an erratically beating heart from kissing anyone at all. To make things worse, she deals with her parents' unrelenting glares as she scrambles past the guards and into the castle like a dirty, muddy mess to change into something presentable.

"Announcing the arrival of the house of Minatozaki, ruling house of the kingdom of Yeon."

Mina is fucked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully I finish this. At the moment I expect the chapter count to be around 15 to 20 in all. Also, this started out fluffy, but you're in for a bumpy ride.


	2. The Calm Before

For the following seven days, nothing is different in Momo's life. After having removed Romeo's saddle and bridle, Momo had promised Romeo green apples and gone off to do her own duties.

She gets consumed by the usual routine: fill the troughs for the horses. Check on the stall doors. The next morning, bring the horses out in groups. Shovel the manure into a wheelbarrow. Wash down the stalls. Clean the troughs. Bring the horses back in. Trough-filling. Rinse, repeat.

It's been like this for seven days and Momo is pretty certain that she completely dreamt up having a picnic with the kingdom's princess. Midway through the week she hears gossip about the visitors that came that night and worries about her sanity, but right now as she approaches Romeo's stall she drops the bucket in her hand.

"Wow, you beat me to it," Momo says.

Mina, at first startled, relaxes at the sound of Momo's voice.

"Hello," Mina says, in a much tighter voice than Momo remembered; she has a bright green apple in hand and lets Romeo have it happily.

Momo assesses Mina's appearance. Mina is dressed in a princess' frock. It's not very elaborate, but it's not simple either. It's house-wear, Momo guesses. Seeing Mina so prim and proper makes Momo wonder for the umpteenth time if the messier Mina from the forest jaunt was real.

Momo doesn't get to ask if it is, because Mina glances back at Romeo to watch him finish the apple and starts walking back.

"I have a tutor waiting," Mina offers in explanation.

"Yes, milady," Momo says, defaulting to formal conventions.

Mina stops in her tracks and turns. "It's still Mina to you."

"Okay."

"I'll see you sometime, Momo. I have to run."

Mina actually does run. Momo watches the sun set on her figure comedically running through a stable in a cumbersome dress and realises this is near the time at which they previously met.

Momo still picks up her bucket and carries her green apple to Romeo. As he chews contentedly, Momo thinks about his calmer temperament and simultaneous anxiousness to be around people, or specifically the only two people he tolerates.

"Momo, the first two stalls are grimy!" the stablemaster calls. "Do them over!"

Momo doesn't want to spend her time explaining that removing the horses at night might spook them; she eventually spends an hour coaxing them into the empty stalls next to Romeo and works late into the night. Surprisingly, when she returns, Romeo hasn't attempted to chew their heads off.

-

Two days after Mina's brief re-appearance, Momo sees an orange-haired idiot stalk into the stables with a large scroll behind her back.

"There are more inspections," young kitchen girl Chaeyoung says, spending her self-designated off time with fellow slacker Momo. "Apparently the royals felt the grounds weren't impressive enough when the important visitors came."

"Who were the visitors?" Momo asks.

"No idea," Chaeyoung says, scratching her head of short hair. "They don't pay me enough for me to be educated."

Momo watches Chaeyoung shrug and scurry off back to work, her apron strings loose.

The orange-haired idiot is an extremely pale, seemingly adolescent girl with an ungodly walk and a strange sense of purpose.

"I am an inspector!" she calls and taps her scroll on the side of a stall. "I inspect things!"

Momo snickers as a horse neighs loudly and startles the small inspector. After getting frightened the ridiculous figure turns and runs from the stables too.

-

When Mina comes back, it's been a total of ten days since their first excursion. Momo is sitting on a box and feeding Romeo a green apple.

"You're spoiling him," Mina comments.

"You're back, princess," Momo says matter-of-factly, somewhat stunned by the arrival and jaded from a week and more of nothingness at the same time.

"Don't call me that. Also, I'm sorry."

Mina stops herself. She doesn't know what she's sorry for. Or do friends say sorry for not keeping in constant contact with each other? Mina wouldn't know exactly.

"I wanted to make a deal," Mina continues. "I want to go out and ride Romeo more. Explore. And have picnics, or whatever it is that you do. And in return…"

"In return?" Momo asks.

"I haven’t thought of that yet."

"Very princess-like. It's all right, I'm the help."

"No, no, I want to give you something in return."

Momo almost wants to say 'the last time certainly felt like a mutual exchange rather than a one-way gift', but doesn't in favour of her own sense of self-preservation.

"You can rake up a debt," Momo says. "Shall we go? You're outfitted nicely."

Mina rolls her eyes. "I'm sorry, I'm a princess. Sometimes I have to wear fancy breeches, okay?"

Momo almost reaches out to feel the embroidery on Mina’s tight pants but coughs and opens Romeo"s stable door instead. She steps aside for Mina to do her thing, and Mina expertly gets the new bridle and saddle on the horse.

This time they go by the creek, and Mina takes off her boots again, dipping her sore feet in the water. Momo examines the boots. There really isn't much room for her feet.

"What have you been doing?" Momo asks.

Was that the right thing to ask? Should you ask a princess how she has been occupying herself as you would any other person? Chaeyoung would probably say 'trying to get the royal idiots to notice my artistic genius, what else' or 'washing dishes, would you like to take my place' but how would a princess answer?

"Uh, I just have lessons and stuff. I get lectures from tutors and I take tests. I go for meetings just to show my face and right now I'm being trained to better receive visitors."

"Right, who were the visitors?" Momo asks, rolling up her pants.

Mina shrugs. "Extremely important people from the other side of the world. They're staying in the castle right now."

Momo's brows furrow. "Is that why there are so many more helpers rushing about? And foreigners' horses taking up more space in the stables?"

Mina nods. "Yeah, and lots of celebrations in their honour. Don't you see it all happening?"

Momo shakes her head as she steps into the cool water of the creek and wades past waist height, the sight alarming Mina.

"Not really, the stablehand job gives you like one day off every week, and even then it's just a short window of time. I spend most of my time in the bounds of the castle, like you."

"You at least know there's a festival going on, right?"

"I thought it begins only two weeks later," Momo says.

"Oh," Mina says. "Perhaps I was misinformed."

"When do you have to be back?" Momo asks abruptly, watching the sun overhead.

"Just… before it sets."

"There's still time. The water is nice," Momo says and takes Mina's wrists, again reprimanding herself about manhandling royalty, and pulls softly, like she would on Romeo's reins.

"I-"

"Just come."

"I can't swim," Mina says as soon as she is in the cold water, legs moving towards Momo's.

"It's shallow. Okay, now that we're talking, would you care to explain why you wanted to make a deal in the first place?"

Mina clings to Momo's tunic, feeling like Momo has purposely placed her in a physical situation that undermines her negotiating power.

"I don't get to do a lot of things I want to do or see the things I want to see. I want to go places and see Romeo. This is… a nice arrangement that I've stumbled upon."

"Oh, it isn't my charm?" Momo quips spontaneously and then screams internally from the embarrassment and need to slap herself.

Mina hesitates; she remembers the kiss she gave Momo and shakes her head at her impulsiveness. "You are charming… for a woman. You are tolerable as an escort. I promise to pay you well in return."

"A fee?" Momo asks.

"Initially I thought of that, yes, but no money I have is really mine. Try to think of something you want that I have to give myself."

Momo looks into Mina's eyes and almost lets herself think for a moment that this sort of company is payment enough. It's not the same as with Chaeyoung, but this is fun and pleasant.

"Could I have books? And I would like to learn to read," Momo asks shyly, almost shrinking back from her request; Mina denies her this and makes her stay where she is so Mina doesn't drown.

"That was unexpected," Mina says, softening. "But sure. I didn't take you to be the scholarly sort."

Momo shrugs. "I plan on getting out of here someday and getting a better job. I mean, I make a mean bourguignon, but that’s probably not going to make me a comfortable living."

Mina nods. "Sensible. Now, about the festival… I'd like to go."

Momo thinks for a whole silent minute and then doesn't hide her emerging frown. "That'll take an awful lot of planning. Doesn't entirely seem worth it."

Mina purses her lips. "It's just a night out. How much planning work could there be?"

Momo rolls her eyes and pretends to let go of Mina. "Festivals are huge. It's highly likely we'll get trampled on or your identity discovered. I'll need to know the town layout better so that we can travel the less-travelled roads and also have an escape route."

"Then take the time to plan it," Mina shrugs.

"I'll have to go when it's empty in order to plan the routes! What's the point of going to town if there isn't a crowd to…" Momo trails off.

"To?"

Momo sighs. "I go to town to nick things from stalls and carts, so I usually go when there is a sizeable crowd."

Mina's eyes widen. “Pickpocketing.”

"At this point you can't fire or imprison me, right?" Momo wonders aloud.

"I'm not going to. I want you to show me how you do it when we go."

Momo pauses, surprised. "Oh. Well, yeah. Okay."

"Thanks," Mina says, pressing another kiss to Momo's cheek and Momo doesn't know what it means when her heart starts to speed up and her head spins.

-

"Mina, dear, there's going to be a round table meeting with the house of Minatozaki before they leave," the queen says, entering the library. "You will be in attendance, and we will discuss our future allegiances. It will not be as lighthearted as the welcoming banquet, so I expect that you will be punctual and appropriately attired. The servants will make sure of that."

Mina moves her bishop on the chessboard. "Checkmate."

Her tutor applauds and her mother graciously follows after, but Mina narrows her eyes at what looks like a concession.

"I will be there," Mina promises.

"Good. You will not marry yet; they have no male heir, so you will not marry into their house. Kai has also been promised to another house. I'm glad that you will marry later, but that also means this round of diplomacy will not be as easy."

Mina wants to say 'I'm sorry I cannot be of use', but knows that as pragmatic as her parents are, they typically display some amount of compassion for her choices and welfare; the sincerity of such showings, however, is still up for debate.

"I am grateful for these circumstances, and I will do my best to act as the house requires of me to secure our diplomatic relations with their house."

Mina's mother nods and combs her fingers idly through Mina's hair. "I'm sorry that growing up isn't as fun as it should be. I understand your need to run amok and do as you please. Just please be on time for your engagements. Or, at least, the most important of these."

Mina smiles, heartened. "Yes, I will do that."

"I'm not sure where you've been running off to, but I trust that it is within the castle's reach. And at no point will you ride, or your bones will break."

Mina swallows. She notes that her mother doesn't say how her bones will be broken, whether from accident or active punishment.

"Yes, I understand."

"Right, have your lesson," the queen kisses her daughter's hair and leaves the library, and Mina doesn't know whether to smile or shiver.

-

"Bloody hell,” Jackson curses, staring at the new stain on his coat.

Jeongyeon rolls her eyes at the sound. "Jackson, shut your trap. Boy, get us cleaned up. God, standards are falling around here."

"Yes," the short-haired girl says and runs to find a brush.

"The houses of Wang and Yoo!" the orange-haired announcer calls after a short burst of trumpeting noise that Jeongyeon could do without.

Chaeyoung returns with brush in hands and scrapes the mud off the breeches of the young woman and the coat of the young man.

"I ask to enter," Jackson gripes, "and they skid and splash dirt on me. Fine welcome, I say."

"Don't make an arse of yourself," Jeongyeon warns under her breath. "We're here to pay our respects to the Minatozakis and leave. It's a really simple task and a short window of time, but I know you've managed to be an idiot in less time."

"Don't patronise me."

"Don't make my house regret our alliance."

"Fine. Anyway, you know that this entire 'paying our respects' bull isn't all of it. Everyone's here to ingratiate themselves with a potential ally that can be used to overthrow the ruling house."

"Say that any louder and you'll get your head lobbed off," Jeongyeon spits as she dismounts, handing the reins to a stablehand. "Besides, the house of Yoo will have no part in such traitorous activity."

Jackson shrugs. "Frankly, I don't care much either. But the old man does, and if I can stay out of the confrontation, I wouldn't mind a shinier sigil and more boys at my beck and call."

"Well, you're still shallow as ever," Jeongyeon smiles sarcastically.

Jackson shrugs again. "It's the way of the world, it's how things go. It's just power changing hands, and if I get to benefit from it, I don't see why not."

"You know, you're not a devil, and you're most certainly not an angel either. You're just-"

"Incredibly superficial," Jackson says, "and lusty. Yeah. I know. I take pride in these things."

The orange-haired announcer repeats the announcement and Jackson claps her on the back as he enters the castle.

-

When Momo goes to sleep in the evening, after the second trip to the clearing, she has a bad dream. Bad dreams are not anything new for her, but a recurring one always gets her writhing in her flea-ridden bed in the servants' quarters.

It's of a small child in a clearing rolling in blood. Someone's bear-like arms paw the child through the dirt and fresh gristle. There are shouts in the distance, and the child is tossed off to another.

Momo always wakes up screaming for the child.

This time, Chaeyoung is by her side stuffing a stocking in her mouth. Momo wakes up in sweat and clutches Chaeyoung for dear life, wiping and scratching at her own arms as if to rid herself of the smell of the dead.

Momo heaves and then follows Chaeyoung's demonstration of slow and regulated breathing. Chaeyoung finally pulls the stocking out of her mouth.

"Please be quiet," Chaeyoung says, "or everyone might think you're finally getting some."

Momo doesn't have the energy to throttle Chaeyoung by her neck, but opens her mouth to deliver a sarcastic comment.

"Shh," Chaeyoung stops her. "There's something more important. We've gotten some 'deliveries' again. Two are having a very bad fever."

Momo doesn't think twice and throws off the single woven blanket she has, opening the door to the spartan and narrow hallway of the servants' quarters. There are two levels of beds, and almost all of them are empty.

"Give that one to me," Momo says clearly and authoritatively, and a babe wrapped in someone's shirt is passed to her. "You can't hold a child like that. Also, we need alcohol for the children's heads. We'll swab the heat from them."

The old cook stands, shifting between his heavy feet. "That costs money, young lady, and-"

"So be it," Momo gruffly says. "Take it from my pay."

An eight-year old kitchen boy hugs his mother's leg. "That lady is lovely, mother. She cares for us like you said the old masters did, and she-"

"Hyun," his mother reprimands him lovingly, "I told you not to talk loudly about the things I tell you."

Momo rolls her eyes as the boy tugs on his mother's tatty sleep dress and relates to her how Momo stole fairytales from the castle library for his use. When his mother gasps, Momo loudly kicks the books on the floor beneath their bed for good effect.

"If she didn't start taking them in, I wouldn't have you, mama," he says, eyes wide, and Momo feels something in her chest ache.

"I know, darling," and the barren sixty-year old woman clutches her light in life to her bosom, dusting off cobwebs from his mousy brown hair.

When the swabs and wine arrive, Momo feels a stab in her waist just thinking about the pay cuts. She nurses the child till the morning and demands the old cots be brought out of the storage. She tries not to think about how she would be spared from all this trouble if she weren't so easily trapped by her own ghosts of orphanhood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a patchwork of small scenes so as to introduce different plotlines; I hope the quick switches between scenes weren't too disorienting in nature.


	3. A Lukewarm Reception

Mina's been studiously avoiding the Minatozakis in her own household, and the only way to do that now that they have free rein with the castle facilities for another two weeks is to actually bury oneself in books in the most boring location in the castle - the library. This time, a voluntary imprisonment.

Mina pores through the history book on conquest and strategy, and thinks that maybe it's a Myoui thing to love puzzles, challenges, and victory. She makes some notes on a few modern sieges, but stops when the time frame gets too close to where she is now.

Her diligence is unceremoniously interrupted by a crudely crushed piece of parchment flying into the library through a window. She has half a mind to glower at the idiot below, but when she stands and leans over her large oaken desk, she sees a familiar brown-haired servant who really shouldn't be showing up at this time.

Mina scans the courtyard. Thankfully no one is about and Momo stands in the guards' blind spot. Mina carefully takes apart the piece of parchment.

_Greetings milady, I am sure you have found that the festival is two weeks away. I have spent today, my off day, on scouting out safe routes for our travel. I would like to collect advance payment, if I may be so daring. If your question is 'how', my answer is 'I'm good at climbing'. Your gestured agreement to my request will signal me to climb._

Mina deliberates this for a moment. For just a moment. She wishes she had thought about it for more than a mere moment, but Momo's mention of the festival gets her restless and all her studiousness goes out the window.

Mina sticks her head out of the window and nods once. She doesn't see Momo ascend the vine and cling on to various protrusions in the stone structure, but some time later and there is a knock on the library door.

"Were you leaning out the window?" Momo asks.

Mina nods.

"It's more sensible to come up by the balcony. Just in case you need to know."

Mina nods again.

"Why aren't you saying anything?" Momo asks curiously.

"Well," Mina tries hard to articulate her thoughts, "I'm just getting the feeling that our excursions are real now. That you're real. Seeing you here is-"

"Mm, I understand," Momo says.

"Also, you're dirtying my carpet," Mina says, now pointing at Momo's soil-caked boots.

"You employed a dirty stablehand, not a well-travelled spectacled professor, to do your bidding. Have reasonable expectations, princess."

Mina bites her tongue. "Sure. What would you like to start with?"

Momo shuts the door behind her and eases a large shelf behind it to keep it shut, much to the unvoiced chagrin of the princess.

"With food," Momo says, untying the cloth sack from her old rope belt and letting the contents sit on the spread square cloth.

Mina looks on disapprovingly but eventually sits on the carpet to have baked pheasant and bread. They are leftovers from last night, but Mina learns to appreciate the taste.

"I see your shift from the kitchen hasn't solved anything," Mina comments non-judgementally.

Momo thinks for a moment and then shrugs it off. "It's most important that they think they've solved the problem. Now if any food goes missing they'll think to blame their own carelessness. Makes for a better working kitchen."

Mina cleans pheasant off the bone, even without utensil, and nods at Momo's nihilistic philosophising.

"Good?" Momo asks.

Mina merely nods.

"Would have been better if I'd cooked it," Momo says sourly.

"You liked the kitchen job, didn't you?"

"I like the horses too. It's just that I'm better in the kitchen and would have liked to have stayed. Makes eating that much more convenient. Can't be helped, I suppose. Circumstances didn't allow for it."

"All right, shall we start?" Mina asks, dusting her hands off on her casual flowing dress.

"Do we have to?"

"You asked to learn under me!"

"Yes, okay."

Mina picks out a few simple books. "Shall we start with stories?"

Momo shakes her head and stands, reaching Mina. She puts her hands on Mina's and Mina wants to asl 'why the proximity' for a moment, but Momo slides the books back onto the bookshelf and looks solemnly at Mina.

"I am completely illiterate."

"Goodness."

"Yes. We'll start from the alphabet. Writing and reading."

"I don't have books on such fundamental-"

"Yes, that's why you're here. You know the alphabet, I assume?"

"'You know the alphabet, I assume?'" Mina mimicks before beginning an impromptu lesson on the entire English language. "Try to keep up."

-

Jackson is looking both stunned and majorly agitated. Jeongyeon doesn't approve of the melodramatic front, but agrees with his motivations all the same.

As the stablehands saddle up their horses, Jackson spits and kicks a stone on the ground.

"Have you ever seen that level of disinterest?" Jackson asks. "It borders on disrespectful."

"It was… surprising," Jeongyeon says, recalling the brief meeting with the Minatozaki regent, the king, in effect, of Yeon, and his daughter; neither of them looked inclined to discuss alliances with any house.

"I'll say. Usually they look eager to form an alliance with the house with the largest non-royal army," Jackson complained, mounting his horse in one swift move.

Jeongyeon can't deny that the Wang house is the go-to for a capable non-royal army. Filled with battle-hardened mercenaries with diverse experiences, the Wang army is versatile and, most importantly, great in number.

"Sure, but who wants to risk publicly showing favour to the Wangs, the house that was on the wrong side of the last civil war?" Jeongyeon reasons as she mounts her horse. "Don't get your feathers ruffled. Maybe they'll send a gift basket."

"Insulting," Jackson insists, forcing his steed to break into a canter. "Usually I'd at least get a calling sigil or ring. It's not going to look nice for them if they want to start something and have my house on the opposing side."

Jeongyeon doesn't respond to that, thinking to herself that the Wang house is far more practical than it is the huffy, petty front it usually puts on. After all, they rode into battle with the house of Lee against the old house when the odds were clearly in the Lees' favour. The Wang house endured shame for it when the Lees were forced to surrender, but Jackson and Jeongyeon both knew that the Wang decision had been an intelligent one, for no one could have expected the civil war turnaround that had occurred.

As the Yoo heiress watches Jackson ride off on his own with two attendants following, she ruminates on the Minatozakis' intentions. She had previously been certain that they had arrived to survey the situation and begin plans for a hostile takeover, and the shrewd Myoui house would certainly be prepared for this. But Jackson's judgement of 'disinterested' had been right on the head. The Minatozakis did seem disinterested, and Jeongyeon doesn't quite know why or what they're trying to do.

"Milady," someone says, forcing Jeongyeon from her thoughts. "A calling sigil."

Jeongyeon looks down hard at the silver calling sigil that has been placed in her palm. It's the Minatozaki sigil, complete with the symbol of a cobra coiled and ready to strike. A reminder that the Minatozaki house is the great power in the region.

Silver. Jeongyeon nods twice. 'Disinterested, but not disrespectful', was the cue. She wonders how she'll be expected to call on the house when it now resides as a visitor in the ruling house. What could the Minatozakis have in mind?

"Woo, come here," Jeongyeon calls her attendant. "Ride first. Call my cousin. I want to meet as soon as I return."

"Yes milady," Woo says and takes off out of the Myoui stables.

-

"This is enough," Momo says, placing her hand on Mina's and closing the book in that manner. "I can sound out a word if I spend five minutes on it."

"Just give me the time of day," Mina says. "I'm not making you learn the alphabet by heart today. I just need you to pay attention to this."

"What?"

Mina points at her lips. "'Th', not 'f'. I don't know how it spread, but it's like a commoner lisp or something. I'll tell you where you're going wrong when you are."

Momo moves her tongue around in her mouth. "'Th'. I know that."

"Yes, but since you couldn't read, you haven't been attaching that sound to the right words," Mina explains. "For example, you've been saying 'thread' as 'f-read'."

Mina spells the word 'thread' out loud. Momo fits in the right sound.

"Good."

"I don't need to sound like a scholar," Momo mutters. "I just wanted to learn how to read and write."

"Well, if you want to not be a kitchen girl or stablehand for life, you need to learn to make good impressions," Mina says patiently.

Momo nods and frowns, and then lets her head fall into Mina's shoulder. "I'm tired; can we take a break?"

There is no telling when her tutor will burst into the library with the latest maps for her perusal, but Mina doesn't have the heart to move Momo, who is tired out from the session.

"Sure, we'll take a break."  
  
Momo absentmindedly yawns. "Thanks."

Mina stares at the close-to-sleeping figure and thinks about how long it's been since she's been at such a proximity with a person. Since her nanny went away to care for other nobles' children, Mina hasn't had someone get this close.

"Aren't you tired?" Momo asks with her eyes shut.

"A little," Mina says, but knows she has to be vigilant to keep them both out of trouble, so she doesn't move in her seat and keeps her eyes open.

When she hears footsteps in the corridor, Mina all but pushes Momo behind some bookstacks that haven't yet been sorted.

Dinner comes around, but Mina shooes the maid away, saying she wants to finish reading the new texts her tutor brought in. Fascinated by the newfound interest, Mina's tutor says he will stay with her through the evening. She reads Avestan until she wants to die, and then thanks her tutor and promises that she'll be fine reading on her own.

"Your life is horrible," Momo says as she emerges from behind the bookstacks. "Why is that geezer so excited about new sea routes and ancient languages?"

Mina rolls her eyes, but also smiles at the remark. "In its defence, cartography is a terribly useful subject, and being able to read maps is a sought after skill. As for literature, it can be beautiful sometimes, I suppose?"

"Sounds convincing, princess," Momo says before putting down a book of her own.

"It's an acquired taste. What's that?"

Momo doesn't answer directly, but recites, "'What light through yonder window breaks?'"

"Have you been reading Shakespeare?"

Momo looks at the book cover, scrunches her eyebrows together, and then nods in confirmation.

"I always preferred 'these violent delights have violent ends'," Mina says, her voice low and rich, almost self-indulgent.

Momo raises her eyebrows. "So you have some of the ruthless Myoui spirit, then."

Mina's face darkens almost instantly. "'Ruthless Myoui spirit'? You speak too much for a servant."

Momo nearly recoils at the sudden replacement of all hierarchical and professional barriers between them. The mere force of Mina's voice almost makes her crumble to the floor.

"But have you not seen that streak in me already?" Mina asks. "We're a house that makes good deals and strategises well. And we don't mind getting our hands dirty."

Momo finds it in herself to not be intimidated or afraid, and steps closer in the dark room. "That is certainly what they say about your house."

Mina bites her lower lip hard. Momo has caught her at the crossroads of a key quandary - she still doesn't know whether to cluck her tongue at such characterisations of her house or to embrace such an… identity fully.

Momo watches the emotions float across Mina's face. "I'm sorry that I overstepped my bounds, milady. I'll take my leave now."

"No," Mina says quickly, grabbing Momo's wrist. "And I said to not call me that."

"Okay, Mina, but I'm still sorry about saying something wrong."

Mina's hand moves to Momo's face. "I'd rather you say whatever you are thinking. Don't pay any mind to how I react. I like that we communicate as equals."

Momo understands and nods. In the shifting shadows of the library, everything is dark and she can barely see Mina's face.

Her heart accelerates again, and a flash of when Mina kissed her cheek hits her. Suddenly, in the silence, it's all she can think about and she doesn't know why. _Could it- no. No, it can't be._

Still, Momo feels the need to bring up that she remembers the show of affection and appreciated it, so she leans closer in the darkness and hopes her lips make the mark.

She hears Mina gasp, actually feels Mina gasp, because her mouth rests on the edge of Mina's, kissing the corner of her lips.

They hear movements outside.

"You need to leave," Mina says as she pulls away from their minor entanglement in the middle of the library. "You can take a book if you like."

Momo's senses sputter and come alive and she reaches for the first book she sees. She realises her other hand is on the small of Mina's back, and she rubs her thumb gently across it.

"When can I next-"

"I'll come by to tell you, or I'll send a note," Mina says, removing Momo's hand from her back. "You're a lot more forward than I initially thought."

Momo puzzles over this. She looks down at her hand and feels it getting warm from the touch. When she looks back up again, however, her heart starts beating wildly again and she can hardly tell why. Or she would rather not.

"It was a thank you," Momo clarifies.

Mina flings open the window and looks down to make sure the coast is clear. "My kiss counted as a show of gratitude at the time because we hadn't made a deal and your service to me was out of your own kindness. Now that we've made a deal, why thank me for doing as I promised? A 'thank you' my foot."

"Honestly," Momo says as she climbs upon the desk and tries her best not to dirty it, "at the time you chose to spare me from punishment for theft. So we had made an exchange. There was no need for your kiss as thanks."

Mina rolls her eyes. "We hadn't made an explicit deal. You didn't know if I was going to rat you out after returning to the castle."

"Why are we arguing about whether the kisses were out of justified gratitude or not?"

Mina raises an eyebrow as she folds her arms and Momo pauses at the window frame. "Did you know that touching the princess or any royal without their permission can give you a ten-year term?"

"That's ridiculous!" Momo says, but is suddenly silenced.

When they listen closely, they hear the flurry of footsteps turn the corridor and get softer and softer. They glance at each other - it isn't servants coming to get Mina.

Mina all but pulls Momo off the table and drags her towards a corner of the library. Momo follows and watches as Mina slides her finger across decorative bronze plating on the wooden walls. The plating comes away, moving on a concealed hinge.

Mina peers through the gap. "Shit."

"What is it?"

"It's them; they're leaving. They're leaving unannounced at night. Goodness, we have no right to stop them, but this is terrible. We need someone to follow."

"The Minatozakis are going on an excursion unaccompanied?" Momo asks. "You're worried about their intentions, then."

"I'd be an idiot not to be," Mina hisses, watching the purple-gowned Minatozaki heiress descend the steps with great flair and no desire to hide her actions. "But I trust that my parents are acting well."

When Mina turns back to Momo, she realises their bodies are squashed against each other. She steps back and closes the lookout.

Momo frowns as Mina sizes her up.

"You know, you'd be a very good spy," Mina says out loud.

"What-"

"I'm just-"

Momo grits her teeth. "Of all the things you've said to me, that really grates on me. How can you say you want to operate as equals or make a real friend and have company if you don't have a smattering of trust in people? I fully understand your being cautious, and admire your ability to be shrewd and meticulous about everything. But please have some faith here."

Mina looks down pointedly and Momo is left to stare at her angry fistful of Mina's shirt. She doesn't let go, doesn't fear Mina sending her into the dungeons.

"Look, the fact that I said it out loud means I have no suspicions here," Mina says calmly, fully understanding the outburst and openly admiring the gall. "If I truly suspected you I wouldn't have made my suspicions obvious. I was just commenting that this would be an amazing guise for a spy. The stablehands interact with the visitors and external guests at the stables easily, and can pass on information without problem. To have one charm the princess is quite a ploy."

Momo raises an eyebrow. "Charm the princess?"

"Don't be daft after having been so forward this evening," Mina says, looking away as Momo maintains her hold on her shirt and fist against her chest. "If I were the enemy I would also use the plot of… attraction."

At that, Momo releases her hold on Mina. 'Attraction' feels like the perfect word to describe the recent crazy spinning of her head and heart. She goes red and looks down.

"I'm not, though," Momo says, "I promise."

Mina looks deep into Momo's eyes, some dim light illuminating their faces. "I believe you."

"Thanks."

Mina only nods and adjusts her shirt.

"I should go now," Momo says, but doesn't move an inch.

"You should," Mina agrees, but doesn't move either.

"You know," Momo says to stall for time, "I've been here before but I didn't know there was a lookout. I should have known to look around for something like it. Would have been useful then."

Mina narrows her eyes. "A kitchen girl in my library? Oh, secretly. Did you get caught?"

Momo nods sullenly. "Just once though."

Mina laughs. "Is that why that trip didn't teach you to read?"

"No," Momo sulks. "There wasn't a book that teaches one how to read. And I didn't have a teacher. I brought away some books with me but I couldn't do much with them."

Mina nearly throttles the stablehand. "Is that where some of my collections went to?!"

"I'll bring them back, I promise!" Momo says defensively. "I was going to soon anyway."

As Mina leads Momo back to the window, she shakes her head. "God, I should have put you in the castle dungeon by now."

Momo thinks about this for a short second as she grips the window frame and puts her legs outside the window. "You wouldn't. I think you like cleverness and people who can get away with things. You like people who can make the best of challenges and get past set barriers. You're a Myoui after all."

Mina sighs and tells herself not to hit Momo on the head. "Yeah, maybe."

"I'm right," Momo says, now certain. "Why else would a princess want to learn how to pickpocket in the town market? Or bear with all these torturous lessons? You're a curious and clever person with an appreciation for similarly curious and clever people. Why else would you let me steal and trespass on your property? You're so much more of a rebel than people think."

"You think you're so clever," Mina says, clutching Momo close by the collar, "making such daring comments about the disposition of the princess."

"I'm no longer afraid," Momo smirks, "milady."

Mina raises an eyebrow.

"We truly are equals," Momo concludes. "By the way, this has been the best way to spend an off day."

Mina chews on her lip, not knowing how to respond at someone genuinely enjoying her company as an equal. This has to be a first.

Momo can't help, on her end, noticing how red and swollen Mina's lips are, perhaps from her bad habit of biting at them? When Mina catches her staring, she looks away quickly.

"I'll see you soon," Mina finally says. "And thank you."

Momo gets a second kiss on her cheek before she descends unsteadily from the tower. She makes it down with a small tear on her breeches and a scrape on her elbow.

'Attraction' was the word Mina'd used. Momo rubs her chest and tries to calm her beating heart.

-

"We sent out 5 calling sigils, milady," an attendant explains. "My apologies about the last one. The Wang boy exited in a hurry."

The Minatozaki heiress nods, unaffected, in her plush carriage seat. "Not to worry, that one seemed like he had an eager interest in establishing relations with us. We could call on their house unannounced."

"Will we call on all of them tonight?" the attendant asks faithfully.

"We can take our time," the black-haired lady turns to smile at her attendant. "We have all the time of two weeks to have good conversations with the relevant houses. I trust that you brought a scribe?"

"He's seated with the footmen, milady."

Minatozaki Sana nods. "Good. Then all is in order."

"If I may be so daring, milady," the attendant coughs and begins in the private interiority of the carriage that rolls along a dirt road.

"Yes? Ask away."

The attendant is sharp enough to note the undercurrent of warning in that sweet voice.

"Why did you insist on this diplomatic visit even though my liege, Lord Minatozaki, was not keen? Are you curious about the new ruling house? Why? Trade relations have remained the same, so my liege has not been too worried, despite his own sentimentalities."

The lady smiles kindly. "You ask many questions. You are right. I am curious about many things in a way my father is not. I have my own goals as the heir, and I want to know who will be on my side for a small quest I am undertaking."

"Not a war, milady?"

"I don't think it'll come to that, but if it does, so be it."

"Yes milady."

Minatozaki Sana looks back out at the scenery and runs her fingers over the textured symbols in the torn book page in her lap. The sigils of Yoo, Im, Wang, Jung, Zhou, and Lee. There are many things, Sana thinks, she will learn in a series of nights.  



	4. Lilac in a Rose Garden

"Have you ever thought of learning to read?" Momo asks Chaeyoung while they're on break, having spent the morning scrubbing down the Minatozakis' horses.

The quill in Chaeyoung's hand pauses on the page of scrap parchment. "I can read."

"Not that. I mean the common language, English, or any other foreign languages."

"Too troublesome. I don't need that."

Momo nods as she bites the flesh from an orange peel, agreeing wholeheartedly. The whole affair of learning to read is exasperating, and she curses that she feels she must learn anyway.

Chaeyoung looks perfectly happy with her own system of phonetic language, scrawling her own glyphs across a page. It's a perfect metaphor for Chaeyoung's artistic genius; few understand it until Chaeyoung explains it herself.

"What's this one about?" Momo asks.

Chaeyoung looks up briefly from her seat on the stone steps at the back of the kitchen. "A play about the old civil war."

"Between the-"

"Yes," Chaeyoung says. "I feel there's a story to it."

"If you mean the usual story that people like to gossip about, you may be at risk of being put in the dungeons. You know the lord won't stand for it."

Chaeyoung shrugs. "Good thing no one knows, then."

The old cook arrives with blood in his eye and sticks a trembling finger in Momo's face. "The children you tucked away in our quarters, we're getting complaints of noise and threats of checks. I suggest you find some way to manage them, or I will make them quiet forever."

Momo bites down on her tongue. "I'll handle them. Don't touch them."

The old cook turns his attention to the small writer, who looks up at him with bored eyes. He rips the scrap out of her hands, grinds his foot down on it in the dirt, and kicks it into a sewage drain.

"Get to work," he growls like a feral animal and rampages off to the kitchen.

As Momo apologises to Chaeyoung, a housemaid touches her arm and whispers something about the world being cruel as it is, that there is no need to go looking for trouble.

"Fuck that," Momo mutters entirely eloquently, "all the more reason not to leave the world as it is."

-

Kim Dahyun strolls through the castle gardens, thinking that this is not at all how she expected to have a career advancement. Certainly, it's a step up to be trusted not just in court but also in the royal household, but all these new duties seem daunting at the very least.

One month ago, she had been given the additional duty (on top of announcements in the royal court) of announcing guests at the royal banquets. After that, she had been given private audience with Lord Myoui himself to receive instructions of a sensitive nature, all to prepare the house for the arrival of an old ally to Ardith.

Dahyun had indeed studied intensively in order to be given the announcer position she now holds, but she never expected to be trusted with being actually clever and discerning about secret royal concerns.

Things only get worse when her garden stroll is interrupted by the very focus of her new responsibilities. She stops in her tracks when she realises she's been noticed.

"Good morning, milady, you rise early," the orange-haired announcer puts her hands behind her back and bows.

Minatozaki Sana is stunning in a purple gown. She smiles and approaches without hesitation, lifting a hand to wave away her attendants.

"On the contrary," the lady says, "I did not rise at all, and I expect you, who are expected to be aware of most of the goings-on here, are aware of that."

Dahyun almost frowns at her faux pas, a clear mistake. "Yes, milady. I am aware of your night-time expedition."

"Expedition?" Sana asks, standing just a metre in front of the nervous announcer in a garden of roses. "You make it sound like it was a quest."

"I didn't mean for my choice of words to have such intimations, milady," Dahyun says quickly. "What you do is none of my business."

"Good," the lady says and forwardly slips her arm around Dahyun's. "Come. I need a pretty face and some idle talk. I have, as you suggested, need for relief from business."

"I could fetch someone with those qualities for you this instant," Dahyun says, frozen on the spot and half dead from catching Sana's lilac fragrance that cuts like a knife through the garden of Myoui roses.

Sana quirks an eyebrow, looking deadly but amused. "You've got a smart tongue. I'm not quite sure if that's good for your profession. I'm not sure talking back is good for any help position at all."

"My apologies, milady," Dahyun concedes. "I know the garden well; shall I show you around?"

"That's more like it."

Dahyun is prepared to obsequiously recite the name of every last species in the garden. The Minatozaki heir considers shutting the girl up but thinks better of it; monotonous droning is bearable, she decides.

"The Myoui house has begun a new tradition of cultivating new species of flowers," Dahyun says, "mainly roses. A diplomatic initiative, to dedicate new species to important visitors. A Minatozaki rose is being cultivated for presentation at your farewell as we speak."

"I'm sure it will be beautiful," Sana says in passing.

"And this is the selection from Cavenon," Dahyun gestures to the next section of the garden, where exotic flowers grow on well-kept topiaries. "It was a gift from Lord Frej after the war. A congratulatory piece."

"How long have you worked here?" Sana asks, ignoring the talk about botanics.

Dahyun pauses. "For the court? For this house?"

"Do you serve this house?"

"My loyalties lie with the court, I am to be impartial in all affairs, so I work with the house, but not for it."

"Gets difficult, doesn't it?" the lady comments. "You can grow affections for a ruling house, as most subjects do."

"It is certainly a problem for some," Dahyun answers carefully, making no reference to herself or any other help.

The Minatozaki lady turns to her pale companion and runs a hand down her face. "I can't walk into another city and expect honesty or loyalty, now can I?"

"Milady?"

"Don't play dumb with me. I don't appreciate it in the least."

Saying that, Sana drags the young announcer beneath a tree of orange roses, deigning to run her fingers down the girl's face.

"I'll try this once, and if you can't give me what I need, we'll move on to what I want, because I really am tired of business talk," the seductress says, intently studying Dahyun's slender figure and drawing their faces closer to each other. "Do you know where the books are kept in this place?"

Dahyun's eyes are flickering shut. She tries not to be put under by the heavy scent of lilac and lavender. Again, the fragrance cuts through the air like a blade that bends to no form of resistance.

"The- the main library?" Dahyun asks, steadying herself. "I know where the main library is."

"I have no interest in that," the lady says. "I want to know where the books are kept. The ones the Myouis didn't burn in the purge when they took power from the old house."

Dahyun's eyes widen and she pushes the lady's hands off her face. "I don't know that, milady. I don't know that at all. I must go."

Sana grabs her arms before she can flee. She yanks her close again and drops the seductress veil. Dahyun is paralysed, staring in fear at the foreign royal who seems determined to dig some sort of outlawed knowledge out of her, whether it be done by interrogation or disembowelment.

"Where do your loyalties lie? Do they lie with the royal court and this kingdom? If so, abandon your concerns about the endangerment of your job and bring me where I need to go."

Dahyun stares hard at the lady, eyes widening and suddenly unsure, and then turns, stomping away. After a snap of her fingers, a pair of guards escorts her into the castle.

Minatozaki Sana opens her palm and barely reacts to the sting of sharp metal corners into flesh. The girl has a calling sigil too. It doesn't seem belong to any house in Ardith and looks unfamiliar and old. Sana narrows her eyes.

-

"Why are words spelled that way?" Momo frowns. "'Ough'? What is the use of that?"

"It just indicates a certain pronunciation that doesn't seem immediately evident from the arrangement of the letters," Mina explains.

"Any other things I should know?"

"Probably that if a 'k' precedes an 'n' at the beginning of a word, it is silent," Mina says, smiling as Momo's face crumples into a grimace.

"Reading is difficult."

"It's always been second nature to me," Mina says.

Momo hums from where she is on the carpet. For some reason, she's never liked sitting at desks, so she demanded that they move their studies to the carpeted floor. Mina doesn't mind it so much.

"I think that might be because you grew up with tutors," Momo reasons. "I grew up on a farm with a bunch of other kids."

Mina moves closer, a curious only child. "You have many siblings?"

Momo thinks for a bit. "Well, yes and no. They're not really my siblings. I was raised by an old pair that cared for orphaned children. It was a poor foster family."

Mina tries not to look surprised. "Oh. I see. How are they now?"

"Fine," Momo says evenly. "They've taken in more kids and I send bits of my pay home to thank them and to make sure the place is up and running."

"Must've been a fun childhood," Mina says both compassionately and wistfully.

"I don't remember much of it," Momo replies and changes the subject. "Would you like to go somewhere before the festival day? I feel there is somewhere you might want to go."

"What do you have in mind?"

Momo speaks in hushed tones, as if someone might overhear. "Chaeyoung found a dropped calling sigil. It's a Minatozaki sigil. Oddly enough, I think she's using it to call on them rather than have them call on her."

"Explains the night-time excursion."

"They should be continuing," Momo says. "They had me prepare the riding rack for one of the horses. A white steed. It's an Im steed, one of their prized purebreds."

"Already a gift from one of the houses," Mina says thoughtfully. "They act fast. Or they had to, because she called on them at night. So unwise to make such an obvious gift, though."

Momo shrugs. "Maybe it was the only available conciliatory move."

"You think the Minatozakis could have been rejected?"

Momo shrugs in a carefree manner. "I have no idea, really. I'm a stablehand. Whatever happens with nobility is just fun gossip and speculation."

Myoui Mina raises an eyebrow. "Gossip and speculation on which the future of this house and kingdom rests."

Momo scans Mina's face. "Do you really care about that? You always seemed to be above securing the prospects of your house."

Mina doesn't merit the difficult questions with answers and settles for chewing on her lip, clearly plotting something with a determined, frustrated Myoui sparkle in her eye.

"Tell me, Momo, what do the servants say about us? About my house?"

"Contrary to popular belief, we don't really care that much about what the ruling house is. For now we haven't been mistreated, and the wages have more or less remained the same. In terms of what the common people say, the Myouis are a lot less likeable and charming than the old house, but you do have a forceful aura."

Mina almost laughs. "Right, of course. And… the rumours? Be frank with me, Momo. I won't tolerate any mincing of words."

Momo exhales slowly, eyes shifting slightly; this might not simply offend Mina, might also land her a treason charge.

"Go on."

"Just… the traitorous sort of characterisation," Momo says carefully. "Only what is to be expected. They do say that the house has been smart, though, to have opportunistically risen to power during the civil war."

Mina nods. She's heard all of this from her parents' mouths, when they spoke to her various times about the legitimacy of their reign and the altruistic, benevolent nature of their actions.

"Nothing out of the ordinary, then," Mina whispers.

"Yes, it's nothing bad."

"Momo, have you ever been curious about whether the Myouis were traitors? We worked so closely with the old house. We were their royal advisors. When they conveniently died out in the war, we stepped in to take their place and continue their fight against the insurgents. You can say what everyone thought then - that my house was just waiting for the opportunity to claim the throne. That we might even have killed the old rulers ourselves."

"Did you?"

Mina smiles tightly. "I can't answer that, because I don't know either. My parents have never addressed it, but they always say they were just honouring the old house by stepping in to do what the old rulers would have wanted us to do."

"Are you curious yourself?"

Mina bites her lip. "I don't know if I should be. I don't know if I want to know the truth."

"That's like most of the people below. Curious, but reluctant to know the ugly side of things. We're mostly happy to believe what we are told."

"You would expect that," Mina says, suddenly rising and sitting down on Momo's lap. "At the end of it all, people aren't loyal enough to care to find out the truth, to care to find out if their beloved rulers were sold out by traitors in their midst. No matter whether my parents betrayed the old rulers or not twenty-one years ago, they must have taken advantage of the changeable loyalties of the people to take power."

Momo bites her cheek as Mina soliloquises, staring intently at the sharp angle of Mina's jawline. At these times Momo realises that she, a servant girl, or puny commoner, is in the company of not just a member of the royal family but a member of the Myoui house. That extinguished light in her eyes and sliver of disdain in her ingenuous smile is worrying.

"I haven't known you long, but I don't like that look on your face," Momo admits, letting their faces move closer to each other. "This isn't a 'thank you'. It's just because I don't want you to look like that."

Before Momo's lips can meet her cheek, Mina stops her with a hand. "Well I have something to thank you for."

When Momo looks at her questioningly, Mina supplies 'your honesty'. Mina kisses Momo's cheek and admires the feeling of comfort and solace that doesn't reach all the depths of her chest but still illuminates some places that had never before seen light.

"Can I ask one thing?" Mina asks after she has pulled away. "Why were you late today? Later than the specified time, I mean. It's not an accusation, just wondering."

Momo scratches her head and looks down, not wanting to say that she has to spend a lot of her pay and time looking after children in a rather foolish manner. She opens her mouth once and then closes it again.

"It's all right, then," Mina says, eyebrows crumpling suddenly when she feels a dull pang in her chest - what gave rise to this disappointment?

"I'll tell you later on." Later, when I've gotten them adopted by reasonable adoptive parents and it doesn't look like I'm a self-sacrificial idiot.

Mina shakes her head. "It's fine. They'll get me for dinner soon, and you're going to lose your job for staying away for more than an hour."

"I'll find you at night."

Mina studies the door for some minutes after Momo leaves, as if catching her breath. She scrambles around the library and finds in a chest something she stole, one of the things in the castle she had been forbidden from touching.

-

Three houses sit in clandestine meeting in the Yoo estate, at a round table set in the middle of blue-veined marble, a characteristic aesthetic of the Yoos.

The meeting looks more like an assembly of brooding youths, for it has come to be the ripe time for their aged parents to pass on house duties to their offspring. Lord Yoo, with a short, graying beard and a rough haircut uncharacteristic of a noble, is the only older counterpart in attendance.

"I lost a purebred."

Jackson Wang smiles. "I see that the impetuousness of the Im household has been passed on to the newer generation of representatives."

"Please shut up, both of you, before I send you out of my estate," Yoo Jeongyeon says.

"Peace, daughter," Lord Yoo says, unfolding his arms. "You must learn to be hospitable. Young Jackson, let the Im daughter explain the situation without interruption, please."

Im Nayeon almost sticks out her tongue at Jackson Wang. "She questioned my house's allegiances."

"To the Myouis?" Jeongyeon asks.

"No, not our present allegiances," Nayeon says gravely to a table of waiting ears. "Our allegiances then. Before the war. Then she asked about the current state of political relations."

Jackson nods. "Same on my end. She seemed a bit suspicious of the Wangs, but not any more than I'm used to."

"The curious thing is," Nayeon continues, "that she seemed so much more interested in the past than the present. I thought she was going to test our faith with the Myouis and then make an offer for a takeover alliance. It felt more like an interview for something. Or a scholar's questioning."

Jackson agrees again. "Kept asking for mentions on the old ruling house-"

"Which is outlawed," Jeongyeon spits harshly. "The Myouis banned talk about the old house after they claimed the throne."

"Yes," Jackson says grimly. "I fear she's trying to dig up things the Myoui house has been extremely keen on burying."

"I'm afraid that young lady isn't keen on starting a war, but doesn't know how to go about without unnecessarily provoking the royals," Lord Yoo says thoughtfully and picks up his wine chalice. "Technically her visits have not been illegal or hostile in nature, so there is nothing the Myouis can say, but you can be certain that they're not happy."

"What would you have us do when she visits?" Jeongyeon asks, placing a strong but loving hand on her father's forearm. "Will you or I receive her?"

The sparse partly grey, partly white eyebrows on Lord Yoo's face knit. "We will both. If she wants to know about the old times, she will want to see me more than you for the information she seeks. But I need you to be the main diplomat."

"Yes, my liege. Shall we have the Wangs send men?"

Lord Yoo shakes his head. "We cannot show a hostile front. Foolish diplomacy."

Jackson, decked out in the all-black of mercenary men, folds his arms and moves closer to the table with a smug smile. "We can have some men in the shadows. They won't be seen. See, lady Im, if you'd bothered to ask for regular protection, you wouldn't have to scramble to throw a bloody horse out into the open for the taking."

Nayeon slams her fist onto the table. "An Im purebred is a universal sign of peace."

"No," Jackson argues. "It's the white dove. What do your bloody horses have to do with peace?"

"They've been gifted to the most important leaders in the world," Nayeon growls, and Lord Yoo reaches over to put a hand on the lady's arm. "The Im legacy of steed diplomacy and the commercial sale of the best horses to the most respectable institutions in the world is not to be mangled in the mouth of some dirty, new-money ruffian."

Jackson only laughs, more joking than malicious. Jeongyeon rolls her eyes and tries not to make another comment about regretting the Yoo-Wang alliance. It was the only way to reconcile the stray mercenary-owning family with the kingdom - that is, making an alliance between the family commanding the royal army and them. It was a Myoui suggestion, oddly benevolent but characteristically intelligent.

"Thank you, lady Im," Lord Yoo says. "That will be enough. We are sorry for the loss of one of your house's purebreds. Thank you for the information you have given us. We are in your debt."

Jeongyeon stands to guide the visitors out of the home at evening time, leading them across a long hallway. Jackson notices but ignores every bronze incarnation of the Yoo commanders. The military lineage is grand and imposing, but his mercenary upbringing has made him distrustful and irreverent. Nayeon, having seen the interior of the Yoo house too many more times than she will admit, is unimpressed also. They don't, however, shirk the cold feeling of ancestry and old blood watching until they exit the door.

Before Nayeon can leave, Jeongyeon watches her father ascend the stairs to his quarters. She waits a few beats before leading Nayeon back in.

"Have you ever thought of reversing your father's pacifist military policy?" Nayeon asks when they are in bed, running her fingers across the medals and ribbons adorning the army uniform draped over Jeongyeon's bedpost.

"Don't ask me about such things here," Jeongyeon says sternly, picking up the uniform and hurling it across the room in her usual curt manner.

Nayeon is unaffected, used to this side of Jeongyeon. "What are you going to do when she gets here tonight?"

"I don't know what there is for me to do," Jeongyeon finally sighs. "I feel like my father isn't telling me everything. Especially about why Minatozaki Sana is digging into history. Everyone in the region knows that there must be a reason behind the purge after the war, but most of us have been content not knowing. I've lived like that, doing my father's bidding and suppressing my more natural urges."

"Do you think you'll learn things tonight?" Nayeon asks, lazily rubbing circles on Jeongyeon's bare stomach. "Would you want to?"

Jeongyeon thinks. "I think I will. And I think we should want to."

Nayeon nods and presses her lips against Jeongyeon's neck, eliciting a groan from the other.

"Aren't you glad it wasn't a marriage proposal from the Minatozakis?" Nayeon asks teasingly, licking at warm skin.

"Please," Jeongyeon croaks out.

"On your back," Nayeon says dangerously, and Jeongyeon turns over obediently, muffling her moans as Nayeon digs her fingernails into flesh.


	5. Bildungsroman

**** Mina and Momo turn up late to the escape of one Minatozaki lady. They ride on horseback, and Mina is internally grateful that Momo insisted on them using two horses, specifically two young horses.   
  
Just keeping up with the Im steed is difficult, even when it seems to be barely putting effort into a canter. They follow at a leisurely pace until the Minatozaki lady turns back, sees them, and breaks into a mad race for the end of some wide road.   
  
Mina slows. "At least I know she's headed for the Yoo estate. Probably made a terrible error in letting her see me. Things are not going to go well for me if she acknowledges that I followed her in broad daylight."   
  
Momo urgently gallops past Mina on her palomino, Kolani. "Don't be daft, princess, that isn't her. I haven't seen her, but when the rider turned his tunic was exposed."   
  
Mina slaps the rump of her horse to keep pace with Momo, trying to remember the flash of tunic when the rider turned. At first she thought it was something similar to the lady's purple gown on the previous evening, but she now recalls the deeper colour - navy blue.   
  
"Shit, someone from the academy," Mina curses under her breath and takes off. "We should catch him. Even if it's a common thief, returning the steed to either the Ims or Minatozakis will get me good favour."   
  
Mina recalls bullying her tutors into bringing her specimen battle route maps. If she just veers off the usual dirt path to the Yoo estate now, she'll ascend the hill much more quickly and cut off the runner's path.   
  
She doesn't look at Momo's alarmed expression as she rides off the dirt path. Certainly, locating the path is a little more difficult than she expected, but two sharp wrong turns and Mina corrects her steed's direction. The path is barely dirt, more pebble and laid hay.   
  
Mina speeds through the trees on the gentle hill slope, hearing fallen branches break beneath the horse's hooves and feeling slender twigs claw at her skin before breaking off. She can tell that this will be a trespassing offence if she isn't immediately recognised, but she'll take her chances on her first expedition.   
  
She can see the lights of the Yoo estate now. The Yoo estate uses torches, not lamps, just like it uses blue-veined marble, not stone, for all major structures. The estate is probably the most chilly and impressive of all the other houses' estates.   
  
"Here, boy," Mina says breathlessly as they break into a gallop, catching sight of the vulnerable, exposed left side of the rider speeding down the dirt path on an Im steed.   
  
Mina feels for the rod-shaped weapon beneath her vest. At the last moment, she thinks the better of it and slaps the horse's rump such that it rears up and goes faster.   
  
She skids into the path of the white horse, whose legs are now terribly soiled and unfortunately unclean. The cloaked rider yanks on the reins and falls back, tumbling off the horse. The Im steed bucks crazily.   
  
Mina sees Momo catching up, and she doesn't have to say anything. The stablehand, as if it is second nature, goes for the runaway horse first, arm out for the reins.   
  
Mina dismounts, hand on her weapon and ready to draw. When she approaches the fallen figure, she strikes a flame against a rough patch on her vest. She brings the match closer to the rider.   
  
"State who you are now and you will be spared your life," Mina says breathlessly, repeating the same last phrase she has heard her older, more established counterparts say so many times now.   
  
"I don't know why you were chasing me but please let me live. If that was your horse, lady, I beg your forgiveness," the rider says, his cloak falling away and exposing the embroidered crest of the knight academy on his tunic.   
  
"If that was my horse?" Mina asks, close to grabbing the collar of the cloaked young man with dusty brown hair. "Why do you not know who owns that horse?    
  
"Someone approached me in town and asked if I wanted to have the chance to ride an Im purebred. Of course I said yes. He told me to find him at a certain location, and he said I could ride the horse for the night as long as I went as fast as I could go."   
  
"Get on your feet," Mina says, cold as stone.   
  
Momo returns on the white steed while holding the reins of a much calmer Kolani. Momo assesses the scene, looking at Mina's hands on the frightened young man, and says nothing.   
  
"It's time to pay a visit to the Yoos," Mina announces, and Momo nods, face placid like a good servant instead of a new friend.   
  
Momo supplies Mina with the rope belt she wears and Mina ties her prisoner to her stallion's saddle. They let their horses walk to the gates of the Yoo estate, where the guards are awake and active, as one might expect for a house associated with the royal army.   
  
Mina pulls the hood off her cloak, swears the guards to secrecy on pain of death, and then enters the estate. Lord Yoo has to be in his chambers, but the Yoo girl looks over her balcony and disappears from sight immediately.   
  
As Mina waits to be received, Momo passes her a canteen of water. Mina drinks and, looking down at her hands, sees blood from the runaway knight's scrapes.   
  
"Milady," Jeongyeon appears at the steps of the estate in a robe with a torch, bowing; she motions for attendants to help the princess off her horse, but Mina raises a hand to stop this.   
  
"I think he's one of yours," Mina says, gesturing for the knight to move forward.   
  
Jeongyeon looks stunned, and then enormously annoyed (just the sort of irritation one might expect on the face of a disciplined general looking upon a wayward soldier).   
  
"Yes, that would be right. I recognise him," Jeongyeon finally says.   
  
"He might have been more discerning with his choices when he was offered a joyride on an Im purebred by a random stranger," Mina says with poise. "I haven't questioned him on what his intentions with the horse were, but I'd say thievery is not far from the likely options. I think he was headed here for refuge, but hopefully you will be fair with your judgements."   
  
"We have always been that, milady," Jeongyeon says. "I apologise on his behalf."   
  
"The Im steed," Mina raises her hand again and Momo dismounts to guide the purebred forward. "My guess is that it was a gift."   
  
"Not given with an entirely willing spirit," another robed individual emerges from the house and stalks past Jeongyeon easily.   
  
Mina and Momo both try to conceal their shock at the young lady of the Im house's face being revealed under Jeongyeon's torch light. The girl approaches the purebred and examines it.   
  
"We are forever indebted," Im Nayeon says, "and I will see to it that it is returned to my stables, milady. Do not worry. Our allegiances lie with the Myouis."   
  
"I am not worried," Mina says evenly. "But I would suggest leaving the horse here for when the visitor arrives. I'm sure she will give you some explanation that you will convey to me, along with the other details of your meeting."   
  
"That will be done," Yoo Jeongyeon says calmly. "As lady Im says, our allegiance lies with you. But as far as we know, the Minatozakis have not asked for pledges of allegiance for any purpose. The lady of the house is more curious about old house relations in the kingdom, milady. Pre-civil war relations."   
  
Mina grips the reins of her horse tightly and wills her anxiety over this first diplomatic front to leave her. She nods in acknowledgement of their pledges of loyalty and the information provided.   
  
"Let us tend to your horses and give you rest," Jeongyeon offers. "My servants will escort you to your chambers and will prepare for your morning departure."   
  
"The offer is kind, lady Yoo, but you will understand that I wish to keep the events of the night to just us."   
  
"Then at least your servant's horse. We will give you another," Jeongyeon says, revealing an instinctive urge to maintain the health of a battalion as she gestures to Momo's horse; Mina sees that Kolani is wounded.   
  
"My servant and I will take my horse back," Mina declares. "Send the palomino back to me as time permits."   
  
Jeongyeon bows deeply and attendants escort both the white pedigree and palomino to the Yoo stables. Before Mina can object, servants bring new canteens and a sack of food. The prisoner is untied and escorted away.   
  
Im Nayeon bows as well before disappearing back into the house. Jeongyeon looks slightly uncomfortable, probably not from the new tasks but from the discovery of her personal affairs. Aside from the minor discomfort showing on her lit face, Jeongyeon looks determined and like she has got the makings of a good commander, Mina thinks.   
  
Momo mounts the horse and gives its rump a slap. It takes off down the dirt path and out of the Yoo estate. Mina clings to Momo quietly.   
  
"Have I scared you?" Mina asks.   
  
"Not really, no."   
  
"I've scared myself," Mina admits, and then reaches for one of Momo's hands, taking it off the reins.   
  
Momo doesn't look back, but Mina places her palm on a place on her vest. Momo feels a rod-like object under her palm and retracts her hand.   
  
"I stole it a long time ago," Mina says. "I almost took it out on that knight. I was so keen on making him keel over on the ground and submit to me."   
  
"Don't be afraid of the things you need to do," Momo says. "I should have been in knight school, but I couldn't bring a sword down on someone. So I was sent away to be a kitchen girl."   
  
"That's livelihood," Mina argues, even as she is tired and resting her head on Momo's shoulder.   
  
"You're nobility," Momo reminds her, even though her voice is uncertain. "Veiled threats and political ruthlessness are your livelihood. Be smart and try not to die."   
  
Mina nods. "Hmm. Why do you think the Minatozaki lady is so interested in old house relations? The state of politics before the war?"   
  
Momo remembers late-night talks with the servants about the atrocities of the purge and the forced silence after the war.   
  
"Probably a death wish?" Momo says, trying to comprehend the lady's actions. "Or a history fanatic."   
  
"People would be stupid to be obsessed with the past and the old, after all that my house has done," Mina says emotionlessly, staring again at her hands. "To be truthful, even I don't know much about Ardith before my house took over."   
  
"'It has been a prosperous two decades'," Momo says; it's a line from the royal banquet that took place a year ago, a reminder that economic wealth and peace are a scrub-dry for everything else.   
  
Mina nods into Momo's shoulder. "I have known only that. That the Myoui house is efficient. Shrewd. Momo, do you know about the old ruling house and their allies?"   
  
Momo keeps quiet for a long minute. Mina lets her, thinking that Momo is contemplating whether to trust the princess of the Myoui house that has severely banned talk of the old ruling house and pre-war life. In reality, Momo has only heard the usual 'grass is greener on the other (or older) side' talk.   
  
"I don't know anything. Just saying their name is like saying the name of the devil, in town," Momo tells Mina truthfully. "I've only heard it twice, and both times were from madmen beggars, and then I never saw them on the streets again."   
  
"Thanks for your honesty again," Mina says. "You'd expect the princess to know kingdom history well, but that is kept especially from me. It's ironic, and idiotic. How will I ever rule if I don't know pre-war alliances and who I can trust in the present?"   
  
Momo knows not to utter a single word about the uncertainties over the legitimacy of Myoui rule. That was probably the main reason the purge and other horrific royal actions were sanctioned by the Myouis.   
  
"I've always had such questions at the back of my mind," Mina admits to the night air, enjoying the rare privacy and potential for freedom of thought. "I'm sure most have."   
  
Momo only says 'hmm' and keeps her eyes on the road. Mina keeps talking about her decision to expand her studies and look hard at old politics, and Momo can feel the weight of the body behind her grow heavier and heavier.   
  
Mina yawns, finally conceding to her sleepiness and the lulling clip-clop of Don Juan's heavy hooves. "Can you tell me when we get home?"   
  
"Of course."   
  
-   
  
Minatozaki Sana is in the chambers of the royal announcer. She also isn't clothed at all, which makes matters a little bit more interesting for her and several times more confusing for the young help.   
  
Sana folds one leg over the other as Dahyun finally sits on a plush chair to face her, collecting her calling sigil from her hand.   
  
"I can't tell you where the books are kept, because I don't know," Dahyun says, hoping to all that is good that there is no one spying on them at the moment.   
  
"Right," Sana says, "then why did you call me here?"   
  
Dahyun swallows and keeps her eyes on Sana's face even as she adjusts hee nude body in her seat. "That's because I need to tell you that you are saying and doing things that are considered illegal in this kingdom. We do not mention the purge, nor do we talk about the old books, nor do we speak of the old ruling house."   
  
Sana looks bored. "You wanted to warn me. Believe me, I have been warned many times before."   
  
"Additionally, I want to know what you mean by that I'd be serving the court and kingdom by telling you where the books are," Dahyun says. "You think that by disobeying Myoui orders to keep quiet about the past, I'll be serving the kingdom well?"   
  
Sana nods, standing.   
  
"You're a lot more direct in private, which is good. Unfortunately, I can't tell you more until I get my hands on the kept books. I know the Myouis kept some originals before performing the purge. I want to see those records."   
  
Dahyun nearly pulls out her own hair. "No one knows where those things are! Or if some do, I am not among the privileged few."   
  
Sana steps in closer to Dahyun in the announcer's own white-walled chambers. "Then you are of no use to me."   
  
"Wha- I-"   
  
"Shh," Sana says as she swings a leg over Dahyun and presses herself close. "Like I said in the garden, if you can help me with my business, great. If you can't, fine also. I need someone useless to relieve me from the stresses of my mission."   
  
Dahyun's protest is cut off by a pair of soft lips. How could a seemingly manipulative person feel so soft to the touch? Dahyun presses herself into the kiss also and gasps when Sana picks up her hand to place it on Sana's thigh.   
  
"If you want to reveal that you might be useful in the least," Sana says, "do it in the morning. I'll have to deal with business then anyway. For now, I want you."   
  
Dahyun watches Sana's sultry movements and has flashbacks to her church upbringing. She shakes such thoughts away and yanks Sana's body towards her, loosening her own robes.   
  
"Fine," Dahyun grits out before tweaking Sana's nipple harshly to convey her general irritation. "But I'm in charge."   
  
Sana smiles. "I like the sound of that."   
  
-   
  
Mina wakes up in her bed. Her maid tells her that a stablehand woke the maids in their servants' quarters to have them carry her back in.   
  
As the maids dress her for the day, Mina looks at her hands. The blood is no longer there. It's like the night's events hadn't occurred at all.   
  
"What is there for me today, Hyerin?" Mina asks.   
  
"Fittings for the coming banquet, an etiquette class, a history and literature lesson with scholar Yun, and the Lord and lady wish to speak with you about banquet preparations."   
  
Mina nods as the ladies tie up the corset behind her. "Thank you. Can you send for Yun and tell him I want a lesson in cartography and political relations instead?"   
  
"Texts about our kingdom or elsewhere, milady?" Hyerin asks and Mina is grateful that some of the help is educated or at the very least interested in the details of her education.   
  
"Here and elsewhere," Mina answers, "but priority to Ardith."   
  
"He must be on his way from the outskirts already, milady, but I will see to it that he makes the necessary changes for the lessons," Hyerin reports, making a move to leave the chambers.   
  
"Wait," Mina catches her with a sharp command. "If he could bring in books about the fundamentals of the written language, that would be helpful as well."   
  
Hyerin offers a puzzled look, but rubs it away from her features in favour of an obliging, pleasant expression. "Of course, milady. Whatever you wish."   



	6. Ghost House

Mina had been thrilled to learn that her etiquette class for the day would somehow miraculously consist of archery lessons. She learns now that 'archery' doesn't mean 'archery' when it's about etiquette.  
  
"And the form is graceful!" the overly excited old lady says, demonstrating the elegant and impractical posture for ceremonial archery. "Like so, with the hipbone just curving outwards to show the womanly figure."  
  
Mina smiles tightly and does as told. When she draws the arrow back on the bowstring, however, she gets a lightning flash of memory of the texture of the roughly made crossbow beneath her vest from the previous night. The arrow goes wayward when released, and hits the hay bale instead of the target.  
  
"Excellent!" the grey-haired lady applauds, twirlieng around in her frock on the green. "I have never seen such natural beauty. Now, if only you would adjust your stance such that your feet aren't turned completely outwards. Somewhat unsightly, young mistress."  
  
Mina bites down hard on her cheek and adjusts her feet. Â Beyond the hay bales, Mina can see the stables. A lone figure is resting their arms on the fence, having placed their shovel against a post in order to spectate the etiquette lesson. Mina almost rolls her eyes when she sees Momo laugh at the lady roughly adjusting her posture.  
  
It's almost like the night's events had been scrubbed clean. Mina feels the well-crafted arrow in her grip and feels a sense of dread and thrill at the same time. She looks up, and Momo's expression is light-hearted, but it doesn't make her forget the weapon in her hands.  
  
She fires again, and the arrow misses the mark due to the awkward posture. Mina almost curses aloud.  
  
Behind the teacher and student, someone starts clapping. Mina turns to see her burly brother with a disembowelled boar slung over his shoulder. He looks amused in his hunting get-up.  
  
"Not a word, Kai," Mina says sweetly, but she and her brother have tussled discreetly enough for him to pick out the snarl that barely surrounds her vocalisation of his name.  
  
"You're doing a good job," Kai grins. "Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'll be letting you accompany me on my trips any time soon."  
  
Mina wants to spit on her brother's shoes, because when they were young, Mina had demonstrated a real flair for both ballet and archery and been a better marksman than her brother, but of course gender roles dictated that they be trained differently. If Kai's archery skills are better than hers now, she can fault her exile from skill-based archery lessons.  
  
"Shouldn't you be busy?" Mina asks.  
  
Kai shrugs and rubs the hairy side of his kill. "It's been a while since I took a break. I've been up all night instructing the castle guard because of that Minatozaki minx's trips to bribe our allies."  
  
"Oh?" Mina says, relaxing her arms and passing the bow and arrow to her instructor. "I heard it wasn't just brutish bribery, though? No propositions were made, people say."  
  
Kai lifts a dark eyebrow, lines in his forehead beginning to show. "'You've heard'? 'People say'? What do you mean, Mina? How do you know?"  
  
Mina shrugs, always having enjoyed one-upping her brother in all aspects of life; she means to give her brother all the information he needs, but in order to protect the secret of her involvement in Minatozaki matters, she keeps mum. She wonders if pure hubris has given her away, however.  
  
Kai exhales forcefully. "No matter what she's doing, she's been incredibly troublesome to me. Just last night we sent men after her on her horse, but she was too fast and the horse too skittish. My men were driven into a ditch just minutes after we started tracking her. Now the horse hasn't returned and she's having tea in the tea-room and we don't know what has happened."  
  
Mina nods thoughtfully, quietly thanking the gods that Kai's guard hadn't seen her and Momo the night before.  
  
"Well," Mina says innocently and placatorily, "hopefully all things will come to light soon."  
  
"Hopefully she and her entourage fucks off faster, you mean," Kai grumbles moodily and stalks off, but not before patting his sister on her shoulder and she shirking off the gesture.  
  
"Right, one more time," the irrepressible lady beside her says.  
  
Mina uses all her might to shift out of her instinctive archer's stance and into that fit for a princess. The arrow misses the mark yet again, and an attendant behind yelps, running.  
  
Mina hears a laugh from the stables, and she's about to cry foul when Momo clearly steps down hard on the butt of her shovel and gets a face full of metal.  
  
Mina chews on her lip, willing herself not to smile so conspicuously.  
  
When the morning lesson is finally over, Mina reaches behind herself to loosen the strings on her dress and waves her attendants away. She tells them she'll walk herself back to Yun's classes.  
  
When Mina gets to the stables, three stablehands bow and Momo, looking up from behind them, bows also. Mina accepts the motion this once since they're in full view of castle help, but she still walks towards Romeo's stall and her eyes say Momo should follow.  
  
Mina makes a green apple appear from underneath her frock and hands it to Romeo as she waits for Momo to catch up to her.  
  
"Impressive," Momo comments softly.  
  
"The worst dresses can hold the most things, and they're already heavy anyway, so what's a bit more luggage?"  
  
"I meant your archery."  
  
Mina throws a fist directly into Momo's shoulder. She winces.  
  
"I'll bet you couldn't shoot a duck if someone held it in front of you," Mina says.  
  
Momo scratches her head. "Yes, my lack of gross motor skills was another reason I didn't make it to the much more lucrative knight academy."  
  
"I'm sure we pay you enough," Mina says.  
  
Momo shrugs. "Could be better."  
  
Mina narrows her eyes. "I could look into the ledger books and see to it that the servants' requests are well taken care of."  
  
Momo all but presses Mina into the stall door, laughing. "Don't get so huffy. I was kidding. Each of us nicks enough castle leftovers to do well for ourselves."  
  
Mina feels Momo in her personal space and wonders when they got this close, both emotionally and physically. She places her hands on Momo's tunic as she is leant back over the stall door, the two beginning to playfully shove at each other.  
  
"Bloody ungrateful servant," Mina laughs and knees Momo in the arse.  
  
"Are you going to tell me to 'know my place'?" Momo grins, elbowing Mina in her side. "I cower in fear, milady!"  
  
"Fuck you," Mina slaps Momo hard on her thigh, and then swings closer into Momo's reach, pushing her against the stall post until Momo can feel the horse breathe hard against her head behind her.  
  
"Dirty mouth," Momo remarks, upper teeth skating her lower lip.  
  
"Whatever," Mina responds, gently cupping Momo's cheek and pressing a kiss to it, "thank you for the evening."  
  
"Part of the deal-"  
  
"Not the part where you brought me back," Mina cuts her off quickly and drags the cuff of Momo's tunic down until a large shoulder scrape is revealed, "and got this. Did you think I wouldn't see? Did you get it treated?"  
  
"As best as I could," Momo replies, breathing hard and fast at Mina's sudden advancement. "I should have known grabbing the reins of a maddened horse would get me thrown off my own."  
  
"I'm getting you some elementary level books to compensate," Mina tells her as she remains close. "Or trying to. We'll see what my tutors can bring me."  
  
Momo nods, steadying Mina with a hand on the small of her back. "Thanks. I appreciate that."  
  
Mina only nods and rests her forehead on Momo's shoulder, suddenly enforcing a silence between them. Only the soft raking of leaves and shovelling of hay is heard in the background. Momo leans her head against Mina's, both of them tired from insufficient sleep and daily responsibilities.  
  
Mina thinks for a moment that these such comforting instances could be entirely nice in a slightly altered context. She ponders over the awful coincidence, that such a restful arrangement has come during a time of danger and increasing urgency for her to act as a political agent. Her conflicted thoughts are interrupted by scuffling behind her.  
  
"Milady, you're- oh my goodness, my apologies, my apologies," someone calls, flustered, backing away and skidding on dirt.  
  
Mina turns and Momo lifts her head, the two breaking out of what might have looked like an embrace, and what might have been just that.  
  
Hyerin stumbles backwards, trying to process the image of the stablehand's hand pressed again the undone strings of the princess' dress, and the princess' hands on the stablehand's shoulder. And my goodness, had that been a woman?  
  
"Hyerin, no," Mina calls, abandoning Momo and trying to bring the scandalised maid back. "You don't have to-"  
  
"Milady, your secret is safe with me," Hyerin scrambles to say, bowing and curtsying at the same time and all round looking like a mess.  
  
Mina is about to scream 'no', but then an idea hits her. Either way, someone might discover her illegal excursions through a deal with one of the castle stablehands. Additionally, considering the increasingly political nature of the excursions in a time of uncertainty, the consequences of the discovery might be even worse. Fine, Mina thinks, let them think it is a stupid romp arrangement.  
  
"Uh, my gratitude is yours, Hyerin," Mina forces herself to say. "Tell Yun that I will be with him in just a minute. Did he manage to get all that I asked for?"  
  
Hyerin nods, still red and eyes shifting about. "That man always manages somehow, milady. I will be taking my leave."  
  
When Mina turns, she stares mainly at the ground. Momo is biting her thumb.  
  
"Should I help you with the dress?" Momo asks to break the silence.  
  
"Uh, no," Mina says shortly. "I'll have someone inside help."  
  
Momo watches, hand on her shovel, as Mina spins on her heel and marches away with her head hanging low. She feels a burning sensation rising up her neck and reaches for Romeo's face, stroking the cheek of the distempered horse.  
  
"Royalty is so confusing, Romeo," Momo laments, and Romeo whinnies in response, as if in complete understanding.  
  
-  
  
It's almost midday when Sana wakes, naked but covered in sheets in a stranger's chambers. She rubs her eyes and sits up to watch Ardith's royal announcer get into the usual court regalia.  
  
"Occupied today?" Sana asks.  
  
Dahyun turns to see her guest awake. How she hadn't been killed in her sleep by the Minatozaki heiress is a real puzzle to her. What is, perhaps, even more confusing is that Sana is looking like a docile lamb underneath the luxurious canopy of her bed.  
  
"There are court hearings every other day," Dahyun states. "I wrote an address of sorts out for you. It's actually just a set of directions, and you might take a while to get them right, but they should take you where you want to go."  
  
Sana slides out of bed, looking every bit like a young lady than a manipulative politician-in-training, and glances at the parchment on the table.  
  
"Am I going to a library?" Sana asks, her voice still harmless.  
  
"No," Dahyun says. "Just to a man. Please be careful with the resource; it is a well-preserved and valuable one to those who need to know things here. I would recommend that you bring someone who is good at old languages and puzzles, though. Sometimes, when outlawed books are kept, they have to be encoded."  
  
Sana frowns. "I'm getting a secondary source?"  
  
Dahyun sighs. "Yes, during the purge, some intellectuals risked their lives to make copies of outlawed texts. The originals may be kept somewhere by the Myouis, but I swear to you that I do not know where."  
  
Sana puts the parchment back down on the table and moves closer to the young, orange-haired woman. She helps Dahyun with the last two buttons on her uniform.  
  
"Thank you for trusting me," Sana says, surprising Dahyun, and then changes her tone when she sees Dahyun's shock. "Fine, maybe you didn't do it out of trust or belief, but the fact that you looked like you thought I might have good intentions is important to me. I've been treated like an enemy since walking into this place, and I know I have to bear looking like an enemy, with what I'm doing, but it has been so nice to find a bit of solace."  
  
Dahyun breathes. "I don't know what you're doing. I helped you because you aren't doing anything violent or harmful. Or you aren't doing that yet. I hope you have Ardith's interests at heart, whatever you do."  
  
Sana places a kiss on Dahyun's forehead. It is far more chaste than the ones they had at night.  
  
"That is enough for me. Thank you for your hospitality."  
  
As Sana re-dresses herself, Dahyun scans the bruising all over Sana's pale body and instinctively pulls her own collar higher, fearing accusations of indecency in court. When she sees Sana out, she stares hard at the disappearing figure of a key to what seems like an important mystery and wills herself not to chase that key.  
  
Your safety first, Dahyun repeats in her head. That mantra has gotten her to where she is today, and she tries not to entertain the urge to abandon it.  
  
-  
  
"I told you you'd change your mind!" Jackson whoops, placing a dirty boot on the foot of a bronze statue of Jeongyeon's great-grandmother and instantly earning the revulsion of not only the masters of the house, but also the servants who had worked to clean the statues.  
  
"Just ten men," Jeongyeon says, wretchedly tying the knot on her robe more tightly and stomping about the meeting room. "And make sure they're not as loud and ostentatious as you are."  
  
"Not to worry," Jackson says, "no one lives up to the bars I set for ostentatiousness and drama."  
  
Jeongyeon groans and looks down at her scribe, who is scribbling down the contents of the previously recited message furiously. She stamps the seal down hard on the red wax and sends the scribe out the door.  
  
General Park takes her eyes off Jackson's foot on the statue and looks hard at her cousin. "I understand that the meeting might be a difficult one, but I am disappointed that you do not have faith in your and my own men."  
  
Jeongyeon rolls her eyes and sits back down. "I have every faith that our men are reliable, Jihyo. But Jackson is right in saying that guerrilla help might be useful in securing our perimeters."  
  
The general shrugs, tying her hair into a ponytail. "As you see fit. We'll be ready by sundown. You just spend your time crafting your dialogue and explanation for how you have the Minatozaki horse."  
  
"I know."  
  
In the royal castle, Mina is staring out of the library window during a boring rehashed lesson about ancient politics that no longer have implications on today's dealings. It sounds like a story, and stories must be told and focused on where reality is not tasteful. Mina just knew Yun would take the safe route with the subjects she'd chosen.  
  
"And so the Mesopotamians were the richest and most well-linked empire in history," Yun concludes. "Princess? Are you with me, princess?"  
  
Mina doesn't answer. A young palomino is being guided past the castle gates by two men in navy-blue tunics. Mina observes as a brown-haired stablehand fetches the horse, intercepts a folded message deftly, and looks straight up at her where she is caught in the middle of useless history facts.  
  
"That was very useful, Yun. Do me a favour; I'd like you to meet me later in the day. If you need chamber arrangements, I can get that done for you. I have more questions."  
  
"We can continue now, if you'd like," the middle-aged tutor says, puzzled.  
  
"Later," Mina says definitively, and exits the library without more talk.  
  
-  
  
At midnight, like clockwork, the carriages turn up like Nayeon said they would. Jeongyeon welcomes her visitors and scans the estate for the concealed security arrangements. They are all blended into the darkness.  
  
When Lord Yoo offers the Minatozaki lady wine, she declines. She will not eat or touch any drink given to her. Jeongyeon has an unexplainable fit inside about visitors suspecting foul play in their hospitality, but calms herself to sit at the table.  
  
Two mouthfuls of ancestral names into the Minatozaki-led interrogation and Lord Yoo is confused.  
  
"Six of those houses have disappeared from Ardith," Lord Yoo explains. "They are no more. We have no contact with survivors, and their sigils are outlawed."  
  
"Good," Sana smiles and folds her hands across her lap. "That was just a question to verify how much you know and how much you are willing to be honest with me. Tell me, Lord Yoo, was the house of Yoo loyal to the old ruling house?"  
  
Lord Yoo, in all his years of battle experience and observation of political gameplay, shivers at the mention of the old ruling house of Ardith.  
  
"We have been faithful to every ruling house," Lord Yoo says with certainty, "just as we are loyal to the house of Myoui."  
  
Sana thinks in her chair, drawing flowers with her fingertips on the armrests. "Did you support the old house in the civil war?"  
  
"We certainly were not with the Lees," Lord Yoo confirms.  
  
"Were you with the Myouis?" Sana asks.  
  
Lord Yoo blanches, and his face turns to rage. "If you, lady Minatozaki, want to play that old traitor story on the Myoui house and my house, you are looking for trouble. I supported the old house to its last breath, and I helped the Myouis to take the seat they needed to take to salvage the old regime."  
  
Sana nods, seeming pleased. She leans over to her scribe and whispers something. The scribe's face contorts into a bit of confusion, but the item is noted down anyway.  
  
"Thank you for your passion, my lord," Sana says. "I, myself, am not certain of the true way the Myouis came to power and am not here to force rumours and hearsay down the throat of the Yoos. Frankly, though, do you really feel the Myouis have salvaged the old regime at all? It looks like the Myoui house, once the advisors to the old rulers and likely the most knowledgeable about the processes of the old regime, have implemented a very different regime."  
  
Lord Yoo nods. "Valid criticisms, lady Minatozaki. I cannot vouch for all of the ways of each ruling house. Why are you concerned?"  
  
Sana shrugs. "If the Myouis had been the loyal advisors they claim they were, I thought I'd see more similarities between their regimes, like a respectful homage. The Myouis seem to be distancing themselves from their old friends, like there was no kinship there at all."  
  
As Sana's remarks begin to border on blasphemous, Yoo Jeongyeon grips her armrests. Lord Yoo also looks utterly flabbergasted.  
  
"You say that you don't believe or want to force a rumour down our throats, but you seem to trust, very strongly, that there was a feud between the old and new ruling houses that created the political situation we have today in Ardith," Lord Yoo says plainly, having always hated speaking in loops and euphemisms as most exasperating politicians do.  
  
"But can you say there wasn't?" Sana asks. "Or can you safely say that even if there wasn't, the Myouis weren't just acting opportunistically?"  
  
Lord Yoo stands with the last remaining strength in his bones. "No, no I cannot. Why do you need to know the relationship between those houses? Why do you need to untangle the old civil war?"  
  
Sana stands. "I need to know where you and the Myouis stand with regard to loyalties to the old house."  
  
Lord Yoo is shaking now, attendants rushing to his side. "This is madness, lady, we cannot have any loyalties to a house that is now dead! If you mean feelings towards the old house, then perhaps the Myouis might be slightly antagonistic. It matters not to me and the Yoo house. We serve every ruling house that does not harm its people."  
  
"Did you say 'a house that is now dead'?" Sana asks.  
  
"Yes, the old house. It is dead. Do not be obsessed with the past and concern yourself with political issues of the present," Lord Yoo recommends; Jeongyeon reaches his side with a steady arm for purchase.  
  
"Every house I have visited thus far has told me that I am mad and obsessed with the past. I am not. I am not such a romantic as to want to read a past story. I only ask questions that influence my decisions in the present."  
  
"Then stop asking about the ghost house before you get your and my tongues chopped off!" Lord Yoo shouts. "That is a key concern of the present!"  
  
"Bring my father to his chambers," Yoo Jeongyeon says sharply. "And yes, it would do you best to leave. If you are interested in a story about traitors and victims, you do not understand the complexities of war and changes in power."  
  
The lady is about to respond, but to put a useful chess piece in place, Jeongyeon slyly adds, "We have the Im steed you were gifted. It was so nice of you to pay us an early visit with one of our men."  
  
Sana stands, looking half-interested. "He turned up here? That's interesting. Lady, I thank you and your father for your hospitality and raw honesty. You are good people; I just worry for your chosen ignorance."  
  
"Chosen ignorance?" Jeongyeon asks, refusing to let such an insult go.  
  
"Yes," Sana says as her attendants gather their things, "though you cannot be blamed for not knowing about important present developments, your decision to blindly serve is utterly disappointing. I'm not saying the Myouis were traitors, because I honestly do not know the truth yet, but what if they were?"  
  
Jeongyeon grinds her teeth together. "We serve every ruling house that does not harm its people."  
  
"What if there were two?" Sana says quickly, letting some true exasperation shine forth in her face. "What if you had to choose now, where your loyalties lie? What if the old house, your ghost house, is alive and requiring your service? Who would you serve?"  
  
Jeongyeon stands, face crumpled in an ugly glare. "You are mad. That is not a dilemma the Yoos have to have. The old house is dead."  
  
Sana holds her gaze. "That may be so, but ghosts can be resurrected. And then your old loyalties will be important again, will they not?"  
  
Jeongyeon stumbles back, steadying herself with an armrest. "Leave now."  
  
"As the second-closest house to the old one, and supposedly the most important arm of every Ardith ruler, that you choose to be blind as all your forefathers were is frustrating. I'll leave on my own. Don't send me out. Once again, I thank you. Truly."  
  
Jeongyeon looks at the heiress go and her fist slams itself into a marble pillar. The sound reverberates through the estate, and Jeongyeon feels old breakage come back. She stares hard at the knuckles that are revisiting their wounds and thinks about whether ghosts can be brought back to life. **  
**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote 10 chapters and then got stuck with plot. This project was on a bit of a hiatus but I'll start working on plot construction of the back a bit more now. Then hopefully I can change the structure of the remaining chapters that I haven't uploaded to make them consistent with the unwritten further chapters. Posting schedule is very irregular, my apologies. Still hope you enjoy.


	7. Voyagers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Momo takes off on a short journey. Jeongyeon decides to take on a quest seemingly left to the Yoo house. The Myoui heiress receives a proposal.

In the wee hours of the morning, Mina fetches the transcript of the meeting from Momo, who had intercepted it at the gates.

"And I still don't know if this is censored," Mina says, eyes pacing themselves through the record and hands shaking. "But it's raw and red enough that they wouldn't care to bite their tongue for the worst bits."

"I'm not sure what she's trying to say," Momo says, breaking an apple into two on her knee and taking a bite. "How could the ghost house be alive? There were crowds who saw the bodies of the dead royals."

"Are you permitted to speak openly about that?" Mina asks curiously.

"Well, no, but in taverns at night they tell stories to travellers who wouldn't have anything to fear from the Myouis," Momo explains, offering the other half of the apple to Mina; Mina's eyes soften and she takes a bite.

"Right," Mina says, presenting the two books she had carried here. "These are the books I got from Yun. They should be good instruction and practice."

"Thanks. Now I won't have to stare at shit when I'm on break or pretend I can't hear the cook and houselady fucking at night."

Mina almost laughs. "That happens?"

Momo nods. "Heck yeah. Chaeyoung thinks it's disgusting. I just think they should keep their volume down. People have justified urges, but other people are trying to sleep."

Mina brings her hand to Momo's. "Thank you also. I know I look strong for a princess, but I'm really bloody scared."

Momo nods quickly. "I know that. I've been scared too."

Mina's eyes are trained on Momo's, as if trying to make an important decision. Momo thinks Mina's sussing out whether she's a spy again, or perhaps still considering slapping her after the morning teasing. Instead, Mina leans in and presses a kiss to the corner of Momo's mouth, a similar action to Momo's mistake in the dark library, only under the moonlight, Mina can't lie and say it was that - a mistake.

Momo stares after her as Mina gets up.

"I'm going to go ask Yun to tell me more," Mina says. "I want to find out about old political relations and what the Minatozaki lady means when she says that ghosts can be resurrected. After talking to Kai, I feel that matters may be slipping out of my house's hands."

Momo raises an eyebrow, trying to focus on the topic at hand instead of the lingering sensation of Mina's red lips on her cheek and mouth.

"Yes, I know," Mina rambles, "we were great strategists and all that, people love studying the Myouis, but honestly, my parents are getting old and it's time for new blood to take charge. My brother doesn't look like he's got the hang of it yet."

"And you have?" Momo asks cheekily.

"Don't make me hit you again," Mina whispers with a finger underneath Momo's chin. "You know it'd hurt."

"I know, princess."

After Mina leaves, Momo returns to the empty stall beside Romeo's stall and uncovers a wooden box underneath bales of hay. She thumbs the inscriptions on the lid of the box and curses herself for not getting any closer to figuring them out, years after she was gifted the box and left her hometown. She opens the box and picks up the ring and map she'd drawn for herself, even though she knows the way by heart, and exits the stall.

She comes face to face with a short girl with a bucket of carrots. Chaeyoung stares at the box and nods solemnly.

"Did you tell her you were going?" Chaeyoung asks.

"I don't suppose she'd notice," Momo says, resigned to the fact that Chaeyoung knows everything and must know about the… thing between her and the princess.

"If she comes looking for you…?"

"Then I was sent to a neighbouring house as lent help," Momo says. "Thanks for keeping this between us."  
Momo opens Romeo's stall door and doesn't bother with the saddle or bridle. They'll be riding for two nights and controlling Romeo might prove to be difficult, but Momo doesn't want to risk people recognising the royal markings on the accessories.

"I'll see you soon," Momo says, strapping the box to her waist and mounting Romeo smoothly.

Chaeyoung looks amused. "Should I pass on that message or was that actually for me?"

"Don't smart-talk me. Do you want anything? I can pick something up for you," Momo says.

"On your salary?" Chaeyoung jokes. "And with your expenses?"

"I've been frugal, and soon I'll get the babes adopted."

"Oh, I sense a request for a favour," Chaeyoung starts to shake her head.

"The cook'll leave the milk I paid for by the basins at night. You fetch the bottles, the ladies will administer the milk if you so tell them. Now, do you need pieces to fit your instruments?" Momo asks.

"A wooden mouthpiece for a wind instrument," Chaeyoung states, fashioning the desired size with her hands. "You can just get me smooth wood. I can handle the crafting."

Momo nods and bends down to ruffle Chaeyoung's hair. It's been nice to have someone discover her private secrets and to have someone to say private things to. Chaeyoung understands and cares, even if she's a sardonic little genius with little room for emotional attachments.

Momo races into the night, headed for a different sort of clearing. One where the grass is overgrown and the lack of gravestones will look her in the face.

She checks the written date on the first Yoo telegram Mina had seen and dismissed in the afternoon. 'It's approximately on these dates," they had said to her, 'that your parents died. We're not sure.'  
Momo forces herself to swallow back any stinging in her eyes - sometimes the things that require the most clarity in life are subject to the crudest and most careless sort of vagaries.  
  


* * *

  
Mina all but pushes the transcript into Yun's face. As a scholar, his instincts point to savouring every new piece of information, and such new developments in politics are no doubt a thrilling prospect.

"Milady? I mustn’t-"

Mina cuts him off with a hand in the guest chambers which are properly outfitted with a bed and amenities. She sits down on a chair.

"This is of grave importance," Mina says. "You will do all you can to assist me. You know that denying assistance to a royal trying to defend the kingdom is, in effect, an act of treason."

"Milady, when there is no perceptible threat, I don't think that holds," Yun says nervously. "Also, as I was saying, the scholars were the first to be warned of the consequences of exploring outlawed texts when the purge happened. I have the least access to such things."

"Who will have access, then?" Mina asks determinedly.

"You are too narrow," Yun says, shifting his spectacles on his bookish face and hoping the princess will not threaten him for his words. "Consider that some of us do not need the physical texts. I do not know everything, but I read a lot on the old house and old politics before the book-burning."

Mina nods. "You will teach me?"

"We will only speak. If I make for you any new records, they might be found, and I exiled or executed."

"Thank you, Yun. I want to start now."

Yun's face contorts, but he glances back down at the transcript and recognises the ink splotches and thin flourishes to signal impatience and great urgency.

"We'll start with the names of the old house as the basics. I will teach you the foreign relations of the old house and then the domestic house relations. May I have some security that I can speak of your house objectively?"

Mina eyes him for a moment.

"Only what other scholars have written," Yun assures her.

"You speak as you please," Mina quietly tells him.

"Thank you. Let me bring you an old map; maps are the only thing they didn't burn, and I was first a cartographer, after all."

When it's five in the morning and still dark, Mina traces the old trade routes. Her fingertips remember the current ones they traced on the library wall's mounted map. The veins of silk and crop trade flow differently today, Mina notes.

"The economic relationships have changed quite a bit," Mina infers, still awake even as Yun is trying his best not to nod off. "My house trades a lot more with the kingdom of Jing. It was a good change of trade relationships; Jing has always had better harvest conditions and such a variety of crops. The old house must have seen that."

Yun nods again, urging her along her process of thought.

"There must have been other factors that stopped that trade relationship from materialising," Mina concludes. "There was political enmity."

Yun smiles. "You would have made a good historian."

Mina smiles tightly. "Perhaps in another life. Was that inference right?"

"Yes," Yun says. "You got it right on the head. Some things can be confirmed from external scripts. Jing scripts recount the height of animosity between Jing and Ardith almost brought us to inter-state war."

"War," Mina repeats. "To that extent. And we know nothing about these old enmities because my parents refuse to remember them."

"The Myouis couldn't burn things in other lands, and it's good that we still have those resources around. It's only a pity that only the rich can travel that far for knowledge."

"Would you travel that far for knowledge?" Mina asks.

Yun nods without hesitation. "All things should be known."

Mina acknowledges that conviction with another smile, and then thanks Yun for his help.

"One last question, Yun," Mina says before leaving.

"Yes, milady?"

"You painted a good picture of the old house just now. Did you love the house?" Mina says, sticking to the convention of not saying the house name aloud, even though Yun has revealed he is quite privately liberal and not at all superstitious with it.

Yun shakes his head. "Those were depictions by other scholars, and sometimes I feel that a yearning for the idealised past makes their accounts biased."

"Did you personally love the house, though? That's what I'm asking," Mina presses further.

"I have never had such concerns, milady. I don't have affection for houses. Only interest in their decisions and actions. I am sorry if I seem like a cold-hearted man."

"No need to be sorry. It's an interesting perspective."

She takes the transcript from the table and leaves Yun to sleep, scanning the part where the scribbling got messier and messier, the almost undecipherable part of the Minatozaki speech about similarities between ruling decisions being an indicator of Myoui loyalty.

Clearly, Mina decides, the Myoui house isn't entirely the faithful advisory house it first called itself when it took power. Completely erasing a likely-to-be justified history of political enmity for economic purposes is the practical Myoui way, but Mina can't help but feel it is a terrible expression of disloyalty to kiss a dead master's enemy.   
  


* * *

  
By her father's bedside, Jeongyeon kneels and reads out her mother's last letter to the family. It always makes her father feel better, and Jeongyeon is more than happy to accompany the old man who was almost made a paraplegic in the civil war.

"Father, we supported the old house to its last breath, right?" Jeongyeon asks. "We are not traitors."

Lord Yoo grunts. "We are not traitors. We were the second-most trusted house. We valued that position immensely. I loved the old king, Jeongyeon. We were friends."

This is more than Jeongyeon has ever heard on the old house and theirs. She kisses her father's hand and tells him to take his rest, and that she will commit herself to dispelling all unsavoury rumours about traitor houses.

"Wait, daughter, return to my side."

Jeongyeon does, kneeling again. "Yes, my lord?"

"We were entrusted with something a long time ago. As outrageous as the Minatozaki lady's words were, they might have been out of an important sort of curiosity. The bottom of my wardrobe is false. Remove the boards and take with you what you find there."

Jeongyeon does as her father says while he continues in harsh whispers that signal the old age of the man. She knocks through the false bottom and finds a letter with undecipherable scrawlings.

"I thought it was written by a madman. I almost threw it away; I was so stressed out from the war. Then I realised that the old house might have wanted to tell us something that mustn't be known by all."

The language is entirely unfamiliar, perhaps a coded language or artificially constructed one. Translucent ochre paint skates the rim of the parchment and also winds through the letter in strange ways.

"But it's been years. Twenty years, to be exact," Jeongyeon says. "Why do you want to know now?"

The old man laughs shortly in a voice filled with regret. "Some things must be known, I suppose. And if the lady was telling the truth, and I trust my gut feeling that she was telling us some true things, then knowing might actually be important today."

Jeongyeon looks down hard at what looks like nonsense and then kisses her father on the forehead, willing him to sleep and forget. Why are the dead speaking, Jeongyeon wonders, and what do they want?

* * *

  
Mina walks to the stable late morning, ignoring that her maids are whining about her missing various things on her daily itinerary. There are so many things to tell Momo.

Chaeyoung is re-coating the rusty strings of her harp with smoldering metal heated at the furnace when she sees the princess walk in a familiar direction. She looks irritatedly at her project, wishing she didn't have social obligations, and runs off to catch rhe princess.

"Princess!" Chaeyoung calls and gets two dirty looks from accompanying maids for her loudness and rudeness.

"Oh, hello," Mina says. "What is it?"

"You won't find her there today."

Mina looks surprised. "Why? Where is she?"

"She was loaned out to a neighbouring house as stable help. They're breaking in geldings," Chaeyoung says evenly; the evenness of her voice can mostly be attributed to her actual boredom with everything in the world.

Mina looks around. The other stablehands, familiar faces, are still around and at work. She frowns.

"Are you sure?" Mina asks. “Tell me the truth.”

Chaeyoung sighs. "She goes off at this time of year. She takes only one day off for every week so that she can have a longer stretch during this time."

Mina abandons all thought of the things she learnt with Yun, the things she meant to share with Momo, and is left with a puzzled and concerned expression.

"When will she be back?"

"Usually she takes one and a half weeks, but now that she has a horse, I assume it might be shorter," Chaeyoung says, thinking mainly about the smoldering metal that is likely hardening in a bucket as they speak.

"She took one-and-a-half week journeys on foot? Well, I suppose it's good that she got kicked out of the kitchen and placed in the stables, then."

Chaeyoung hums. "It wasn't so much a serendipitous and coincidental arrangement as it was her purposefully being sloppy about her usual hijinks. She resented pretending to be clumsy and easily caught, but she needed the horse, I suppose."

Mina refrains from cursing. "What is the purpose of her departure?"

"I'm afraid she really won't let me tell you that."

Mina exhales loudly, not even bothering to conceal her shock and irritation. The only things on her mind are 'what else isn't she telling me' and then 'what right do I have to know anyway, we only have a deal'. She presses her fingers to her lips, remembering Momo's skin beneath them, and stalks past Chaeyoung.

Someone catches Mina by the arm. She has good mind to shake them off, but Hyerin grips her shoulders tightly and makes her listen.

"My lord and lady will have you see them immediately. We had an unexpected visitor this morning while you were sleeping, and you need to meet with them."

As Hyerin says these important words, an empty carriage trundles past them to be cleaned at the stables. Mina balks at seeing the focus of her inferences at five in the morning - a Choi sigil. The ruling house of the Jing kingdom, the political enemy turned friend due to decisions by the Myoui house.

"Why have I been asked to meet the Chois? I was told Kai was away on an investigative trip with the castle guard."

"They came for you, milady," Hyerin says softly. "I have said more than I should. Come now, milady, you will learn more upstairs."

As Mina ascends the steps, trying to pace herself so that she can collect herself before meeting the Chois, she runs into a figure on the stairs. She startles and then curtsies, hoping her expression is controlled.

"Princess," Minatozaki Sana greets her with the same polite curtsey. "It is good to finally see you. They say you've been cooped up in your library."

"I would love to stay and talk, lady Minatozaki, but my parents and some visitors are expecting me."

Sana nods and scans the single balcony circling them above, as if waiting for something to fall on their heads.  "Right, yes. The Chois are here in the flesh. The three most powerful houses in all the lands, and the ruling houses at that, are gathered here. You would think something important is brewing."

Mina doesn't betray her irritation at the lady's all-knowing smile and runs up the stairs instead, the doors to the main meeting hall being flung open upon her arrival. Sana herself watches the princess disappear and makes haste herself, clutching her robe closer to her body and tightening her grip on the concealed vial inside her sleeve, lest she drop it in her muddled state of mind.

The meeting hall is one of the most impressive rooms in the castle. Its dome-shaped ceiling is painted with the image of a sky and a field, children with crowns on their heads racing across it.  The table is also long and impersonal, made of white marble, but unveined unlike that in the Yoo estate. The backs of chairs are tall, as if to prevent an attack from behind, and a single furnace provides warmth in the back, beneath a golden frame of the Myoui house members.

"My liege, my lady," Mina curtsies.

The Choi king and queen rise, and beckon another to do the same. His face is cut like stone, an impressive sculpt to his cheekbones. Mina has to suppress a gasp at the sight of his face, because as handsome as it is, she has never seen that depth of malevolence so clearly displayed upon a person's face.

Mina suddenly has a throb of empathy for the judgements of the old house.

"Mina," her mother says, "I am so happy to tell you about the decision to marry you on your twentieth birthday. The Chois have made an urgent proposal, and your father and I are happy to accept."

"Why so urgent?" Mina says with a guise of control, and she sees stormy irritation flit across her father's typically bloodless face.

She amends her words quickly. "I have always fancied the convention of a slow courting ritual."

"Which will be done, which will be done," her mother assures her, also placing a hand on the arm of the Choi queen; their skin is tan and hair dark, and their expressions seem, at a glance, welcoming.

"We are here to celebrate your betrothal," Lord Myoui says, transforming the betrothal from a possibility to future fact in a single sentence. "Are you not delighted?"

Mina feels a churning in her stomach. She shuts her eyes for a second and remembers that part of being a Myoui princess is being a princess, and she opens her eyes again, suddenly obliging.  "I am delighted."

"Not as much as you will be, two months from now," the Choi queen says, her blindingly white smile trying its best to be maternal but ending up wild and dangerous.

Mina never thought she'd fear anyone more than the Minatozakis, but she's beginning to realise that rulers in general wear the scariest masks that hide faces appearing only in nightmares.   
  


* * *

  
"Why would they give me thirty horses!" Mina almost yells. "We have more than we need already! And what of cows! Where will we put the damned cows?!"

Chaeyoung strokes her fingers over the newly coated harpstrings, making a soothing melody. "Royals really are quite prone to doing stupid and showy things."

Mina stares at the kitchen-girl-turned-bard and thinks hard about whether she should take offence at the statement. She eventually thinks better of it.

"Is that really why you're so concerned about the marriage?" Chaeyoung asks.

Was the small thing sent to torture her with her thoughts? Mina knows that the Chois, rulers of Jing, might need to be guarded against, according to the advice of the old house.

"No," Mina says softly. "There are other things to figure out."

"I think she likes you back, you know."

"You think who what?" Mina asks, already scandalised to be sitting on the dirty ground near the stable with an unwashed servant and in hiding from all the maids but Hyerin, and even more so now that Chaeyoung has pushed forth a strange insinuation.

"Oh, you weren't talking about that?" Chaeyoung says and shrugs. "Sorry. I thought you meant your rolls in the hay with Momo."

"We- that's not a thing. I don't know what gossip you've heard from the maids, but-"

"I haven't heard anything at all," Chaeyoung offhandedly says, but is cut off by Hyerin rounding the corner with a message.

"Yun is up, milady. He apologises for his tardiness."

"Not a problem. Lock my chamber doors again tonight, Hyerin."

"Yes. Please remember that my lord expects you to rise on time to take a walk with young master Minho tomorrow."

Mina wants to roll her eyes, but is also cognisant of the opportunity to learn about the old house's enemy right from the horse's mouth. She nods and starts running for the guest chambers.   
  


* * *

  
Mina feels like she has shown all by telling Yun both about the encounter with the Chois and the Minatozaki lady, but she's considered that he already has his neck on the line and probably wouldn't do much to endanger his own life further.

"If I may be so daring," Yun says, "to make an inference, I would say that the Minatozaki lady is right. She took into account her own arrival and the Chois', and the most powerful ruling houses don't often see each other in the same place like this. There is a sense of something brewing, and the rushed political marriage suggests the Chois feel like they need to secure their relationship with Ardith."

"Why would they? There has been no threat to the relationship since the Myouis came to power."

"The Minatozaki lady did mention resurrection," Yun says, hoping his student will fill in the blanks.

"The similarity is that both visitors feel that the old house may be coming back," Mina reasons, "and the Chois are against this. Tell me, Yun, what was the Choi position in the civil war?"

"They made no declaration. No open aid."

Mina reclines in her seat and catches the word Yun wanted her to catch. He delights at his student demonstrating all the mental capacities suitable for analysing political intrigue.

"I said 'open' because sometimes, houses provide support to the side they hope to win and say nothing to stay on the good side of all potential winners. Some say the Chois helped the Lees, the Ardith house which led the uprising. Some say the Lees were a mask for the Chois, and the Chois were the real origin of the uprising."

Mina processes these things. "To punish a house that doesn't want to cooperate with them. To artificially create a new ruling house that is amenable to their interests."

"Bingo, princess."

"And if Choi Minho marries me, if the Myoui seat is threatened by the old house, the Chois can openly support the house they want to win."

"I didn't think about that," Yun admits, "but sure, if they so strongly believed your seat might be threatened by another house, that would be a wise decision. You demonstrate Myoui shrewdness."

Mina looks at her hands and doesn't know whether to take Yun's words as a compliment.

"One last question?" Mina asks tentatively.

"Yes, milady?"

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

Yun hums, tapping his finger on his chin. "No, milady, but I have seen stranger things than the dead rising in my life as a scholar."

"Thanks, Yun."

Mina decides that she now knows what one of the political manipulators in her house is doing, but the one that's stayed longer remains an exasperating mystery. Mina also decides that whether she believes in ghosts is not as important as whether the paranoid living rulers around her do.   
  


* * *

  
"This is the itinerary," Park Jihyo says, unrolling a scroll for Jeongyeon's benefit. "We'll see thirty translators, cryptographers, and language specialists in the kingdom."

Jeongyeon fastens the rough ribbon on her peasant's tunic. "Are you taking me to see a quack?"

Jihyo rolls her eyes at her cousin. "They operate using ancient symbols. They might know a thing or two about what you need deciphered."

"Fine."

General Park removes the scroll from the table and marches out of the Yoo estate to check on the three horses she'd demanded for the four-day expedition.

In the hall, Jeongyeon turns to Nayeon, who has been sitting on the block of a pillar, and reaches for her face with her hands.

"I'll be back in four days."

Nayeon smiles. "I know. I heard the entire meeting."

Jeongyeon remains quiet, unsure of what to say next.

"If you were trying to say goodbye, just kiss me."

Jeongyeon doesn't quite know how, but Nayeon leads her and then kisses her cheek for remembrance. Jeongyeon leaves the estate light-headed and with the letter underneath her cloak.   
  


* * *

  
In a field somewhere, Momo ties Romeo to a tree and sits cross-legged under the same tree. She puts her head between her knees and lets the tears run like a dammed up stream finally set free.

She lies for an hour in the field where grass won't grow, where the grass still there is dead and yellow. According to her foster parents, people who couldn't afford much were buried there. The townspeople used to say the same. Momo wishes she dared to dig.

She sits for an hour in the same spot and then takes Romeo to drink, and then visits Kurlique, a small town, in order to get something for Chaeyoung and something to burn.

As she rides again, her arse sore from no saddle, she mourns the box hung by her side, for its inscriptions are turned to the sun to be read by any man, but no one has offered her a reading yet.

Right, Momo remembers. She isn't just supposed to get things from the market. She has to make the annual visit to the man with his books.

Three parties move towards the small, hidden shack in the Kurlique market, hoping to find answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cartography is back. Hopefully I will be able to stick to a regular update schedule of once per week. This entire fic will most likely be at least 14 chapters long. I ask for your patience. If you want to talk to me about this fic or about any other fics I've written, please leave an ask at ask.fm/forthemyoui
> 
> I have seen your comments here and on other social media platforms and so began working through the knots of Cartography with the goal of completing this piece.


	8. First Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three parties converge and blood is drawn.

The Kurlique market is out of the way and far from the capital of Ardith. Most of the peddlers there are travelling folk, never staying in one place for too long. Some take yearly cycles, like the regular ellipse of the moon, so even if the market always looks like a slightly different patchwork of colours than the last year, there are always familiar faces. Momo loves this place, where there are one or two who know her face and name but where there is great tolerance for the need for anonymity.

  
Momo doesn’t steal often in this market. Its wares are not sold beyond a reasonable asking price and most peddlers demonstrate an admirable amount of skill in craftsmanship or lawful acquisition of the most interesting things. She stops by a table of leftover worksman material and runs her knuckles across a small unstained piece of wood. There is a burning sensation, but no splinters come away. Momo sets down some coins for it.   
  
At a single man's outpost, Momo speaks a message out loud and has it written on parchment. It's a notice to the foster place that if she can find a willing traveller, three babes will be delivered from the castle into their stead. Momo considers visiting to deliver the message herself, but thinks better of it in the most irrational manner - recalling a sense of urgency and dread, all surrounding the face of a certain princess.   
  
Momo thanks the man for his services, watches him stamp a seal down and chuck it in a box, and moves on. She guides Romeo until she locates a familiar cart.   
  
“Back so soon?” a one-eyed woman with a cloth around her head catches her looking at her cart of fruits.   
  
Momo palms the largest jackfruit and smiles. “I’m sorry. I can only afford to come so often. I only come when I am brought here by things that need to be remembered.”   
  
“Oh, darling,” the woman says, picking up two more jackfruits and throwing them into a sack for one of her favourite patrons, “I’m sorry about your parents. That’s the way the world is sometimes, cruel to no real fault.”   
  
"I know," Momo nods, as if to convince herself rather than speak of her own conviction. "I don't get myself too hung up on such things."   
  
"Good girl," the lady pats her face. "You know that those of us who know you here care for you very much. You've gone to serve royalty but haven't come back a corrupt idiot like the  guard."   
  
Momo frowns. "They haven't been collecting protection money again, have they?"   
  
The old lady just smiles a bitter, toothless smile. "The prices the people here pay seem to get higher each time I come back and ask."   
  
Momo throws up her hands. "You know I'm fine with thieves. Thieves take what will not be noticed if lost, and they have to meet a challenge. Men with swords and torches are just brutish and infantile."   
  
The old lady smiles a real smile, ruffling Momo's hair. "Oh, you hooligan. I've missed you. A better lot than my own, God knows where they are."   
  
Momo knows the lady doesn't quite care, a husbandless and rugged lady with her own aims and own sights to see.   
  
"What I like about you is that you're good, but not a fool," the lady continues. "You would have made a good knight under the old house."   
  
Momo nearly places a finger to the old lady's leathery lips to silence her, paranoid from talk in the kingdom. She holds herself back, however, and shrugs it off.   
  
"If I could kill a man," Momo muses, "then maybe. But there are other ways."   
  
Momo recalls the time she brought the villagers of Kurlique to a meeting on one of her trips back home after finding that castle guard extortion was still a pressing matter. She'd told them to gather their pots and pans and bring swords and cows, and approach the sleeping guard in the dark. The guard mistook the shimmering metal and loud noises for a contesting army and taken off.   
  
She smiles wistfully for a moment, and then begins to retrieve coins from a woven purse to pay for the fruit. The nimble old lady holds up a hand.   
  
"How many did you steal while we were talking?" the old lady asks point-blank.   
  
"Four mangosteens-" Momo starts.   
  
"You're losing it."   
  
"-and a watermelon."   
  
"That's more like it."   
  
"Do you need payment?"   
  
“Sure, but not with those grimy coins. Instead,” the lady says, “tell me what you’ve been doing, dear girl, for the span of a year while the rest of us idiots were growing old on the road and looking for markets in which we can sell our wares. What sort of fanciful things have you seen?”   
  
“A lot more than the last year,” Momo admits. “Difficult things are going on in the kingdom. I’ve been speaking with royalty, would you believe?”   
  
The old lady nods her head, hands looking for purchase on the edge of her cart like she’s remembering something. “You know I travel, dearie, and I hear things from people outside Ardith. They’re also convinced that something will soon happen in our kingdom.”   
  
Momo wants to launch all the political confusion that’s been roiling around in her head at the lady, but swallows it down and thanks the woman for her generosity. People outside Ardith are talking, Momo thinks, and people inside Ardith didn’t start talking until the Minatozaki lady suggested they should. She can’t help but feel that the Ardith political arena is occupied by a bunch of sitting ducks, no matter how impressive their ascent to power.   
  
Momo shakes her head. Usually she wouldn’t be concerned with such political affairs. She had lived most of her life blissfully ignoring the complications of politics in spite of working in close proximity to one of the political hubs in the region. And now she feels like she must care, must inform the right people, must act to make sure Mina is prepared for the coming storm.   
  
Mina.   
  
Momo remembers the name, touches her lips briefly with a knuckle, and leads Romeo by his cheek down the increasingly messily organised market aisles to find something for Mina. A proper gift. Possibly frivolous, Momo thinks, but frivolity seems precious during a tense time, and is thus that much more valuable.   
  
Momo finds a boy selling his own handmade wooden puzzles. The parts fold around each other, for the toy in his hands, and after a few movements, the object with many bits, bobs, and protrusions, collapses into a sphere. That shock of peace and wholeness is what buys Momo over, aside from the impressive math that must have gone into the making of the toy. She picks one up and pays for it.   
  
For Mina.   
  
Momo ties Romeo up to a docking stall for horses and climbs the two-storey building next to it. It’s still four in the afternoon and rather hot, so she peels open one of the fruits she was given, swathes her face in yellow flesh, and waits patiently for the sun to set. The most important people, Momo knows, are difficult to meet. Her trial and error over the last ten years with the book peddler, however, has made it so that now all it has become is a waiting game.   
  
-   
  
Jeongyeon, Jihyo, and Jackson ride into an alley wide enough for just one horse’s body. The horses tread carefully down the pebbled path into a shadowy area. Jeongyeon expertly turns while on her dappled grey stallion in order to face her counterparts.   
  
“This is a lost cause,” Jeongyeon hisses. “We’ve been down this way three times now, and there is nothing to be found. We should skip this one and head to the next town location before it starts to get dark.”   
  
Jihyo wants to shout at her cousin for her lack of faith, but calms herself for the sake of the peace. “I’ll have you know that each of the persons on my list was located with great difficulty, especially this one. My informant mentioned that meeting the book peddler and linguist is a difficult feat, but one which should bring us what we need.”   
  
“‘Difficult’ isn’t the same as impossible, Jihyo!” Jeongyeon snarls, throwing her fist against the brick wall of the dead end behind her. “What should I do, speak with this wall and wait for it to answer?”   
  
Jackson nearly falls off his horse after Jeongyeon’s exclamation and Jihyo’s eyes widen. Jeongyeon turns back on her horse and looks down at the powdery substance on the side of her fist. Looking up, she realises the brick she had hit had come loose. She didn’t hear it fall, however.   
  
“We only open when it is dark,” a gravelly voice comes through the black space that has replaced the brick in the wall. “Come back later and open this door, if you can.”   
  
When Jeongyeon turns back to her riding counterparts, hand on her chest and making the various signs for all sorts of divinities, she realises Jackson really has fallen off his horse after all. He groans, nursing an injured arm, and Jihyo rolls her eyes at him.   
  
“I told you idiots,” Jihyo says under her breath as Jackson’s horse, frightened by the movement of its rider, shimmies back out of the long alley.   
  
As Jeongyeon watches, Jihyo taps on the reins of her horse and the horse carefully steps over the figure on the floor. A quick shout and the horse is headed for Jackson’s loose one. They can hear new ruckus outside in the Kurlique market, most probably brought on by the frenzied horse.   
  
“Get up,” Jeongyeon says, “before I regret bringing you along.”   
  
-   
  
Mina grips the rose stalk in her fist. 'Good choice' is what she'd wanted to say when she received a red rose in the middle of the Myoui rose garden. But Mina is a good princess, so she thanks Minho (for wasting her time) and takes his arm politely.   
  
"Ardith is beautiful," Minho says, gesturing to the manicured garden that is not at all reflective of Ardith itself. "It's so much more serene than what I see back home."   
  
"What do you see back home?" Mina asks, genuinely curious. "What is Jing like?"   
  
Minho smiles, but the effect is not so much charming as it is frightening. "Well, we started as a pirate city. We haven't changed much. The seas are grey, and we don't have as much green."   
  
"Oh?" Mina says, trying not to look directly at his smile. "But Jing has been known for its plentiful harvest?"   
  
Minho nods, recognising this easily. "Well, it's partly natural climate on the far side of the kingdom and also business spread across the lands."   
  
Mina recalls the word Yun had used last night. 'Colonies'. While Jing had had a natural advantage for the longest time, possessing vast amounts of arable land and yet operating mainly on its fringes as a vibrant and treacherous port city, it had expanded its economic wealth through partial conquest, the equivalent of draining small neighbouring lands of their resources after isolating them from their monarch's rule like wolves would a young calf from the herd.   
  
Mina doesn't bring this up to Minho. She just controls as best she can the expression of a shiver running down her spine at Yun's scholarly observations being confirmed by one of the Jing rulers himself.   
  
"What role do you take on in the house of Choi?" Mina asks, hoping she sounds naturally inquisitive rather than prying.   
  
Fortunately, her to-be husband thinks of this as a natural courtship ritual, namely proving one's status and importance to the to-be bride.   
  
"I used to manage our men," Minho explains.   
  
So like Kai.   
  
"But in the last decade I have been put in charge of a new business project. One that was thought of a long time ago, so I cannot take credit, but one that I have toiled to make real. It is ambitious, I think, but the Chois are known for their innovation."   
  
Congratulations on creating or furthering the concept of colonisation, you brute. Conquest is a fine and interesting thing, since it requires battle on equal terms and the result is complete absorption under the winning administration, but cornering a small part of a large land and leaving it ungoverned only to suck it dry is an entirely different thing. Is this why the old house was so adamantly against cooperating with the Chois?   
  
"It must be a demanding thing," Mina flatters the Choi heir, "to be put in charge of a business project, and for this amount of time. What more wares has the Choi house to sell, pray tell?"   
  
Choi Minho lets out a laugh that should be hearty but ends up cold as the guffaws of a barbarian. "Not wares exactly, but men."   
  
Mina bites down on her tongue hard. "Men?"   
  
"We transport men looking for employment anyway," Minho elaborates, "and they pay us nothing but transport fees. Their employers pay us nothing, and they are also not guaranteed of the quality of the men we send to them."   
  
"You're training slaves?" Mina asks, forgetting to mince her words.   
  
"In effect, yes," Minho smiles, and there is no hint of warmth to his expression at all, only raw eagerness. "We have waited a long while to make the business idea viable. You have, after all, to have willing customers. And sometimes bending one's will is difficult, so you have to break it."   
  
Mina almost crushes the sturdy flower stalk in her fist. An unplucked thorn embeds itself in the fatty outer section of her palm. She does not respond to the physical sensation of penetration at all.   
  
"I must go," Mina announces her departure to the strong man who must be in his thirties, younger than she expected to be married off to. "My tutor is waiting. It was a pleasure."   
  
Yun has to be sleeping still, but it doesn't matter very much to Mina. Minho's eyes were hard and black, Mina thinks as she takes her leave, and his bare arms unhidden by his vest were marked with white strips.   
  
Scars from wayward whiplashes.   
  
Somehow, Mina finds it in herself to grip the rose stalk tighter in her fist as her steps get faster and the maids begin running to catch up. Devils, Mina thinks. The old house was afraid of devils.   
  
She catches herself looking down at her bloody hand, finally releasing the mishandled flower. She finally has blood on her hands and is frightened about it. She feels more alive, and less like a Myoui, than when she first saw blood on her hands.   
  
Choi Minho looks down at the grass. Three drops of blood. Good, he thinks, the Myouis do bleed after all, but at least they act like they don't. That's all that is needed in a partner.   
  
-   
  
Momo knows she's being watched when she does the deed. She resents others getting a free pass to the book peddler's cave, but it's getting too late already and she has an odd need to return faster from her annual journey.   
  
Momo kisses her knuckles and then hits down hard on three separate bricks. They move an inch backwards, and then are hit back with good force. Momo memorises the new order and hits them back.   
  
The process repeats itself over and over again. Jackson drags the hood of his cloak down from the roof of the next building, commenting quietly that the visitor looks like they'll run out of breath soon. The three quietly deliberate who should attempt first later.   
  
In the middle of Momo's round, a brick in the middle of the three movable ones is struck out. Momo dances away from it and the grey stone shoots past her, ricocheting off an alley wall and hitting the ground. It doesn't break, surprisingly, but does chip.   
  
Momo is too quick, refuses to wait for the next round, and hits back immediately. A small 'oomf' is heard, and then the relays stop.   
  
Momo retrieves the brick on her side and places it at the hollow area where she just landed a punch. The individual on the other side places the brick that hit them in the other hollow area. It's like an exchange, she once noted, of positions. Such that the wall layout is never the same.   
  
When the alley wall on Momo's left side opens, Jihyo gasps. They'd been too focused on the sparring wall to note the roof-to-floor crack in the left alley wall.   
  
Momo notices the apprentice has changed. 'They all can't read,' the peddler had once said, 'and it's better that way.'   
  
"Like always," the balding man in a friar's grey cloak says, hunched over a lamp-lit table replacing book spines, "look at whatever you like. If you can, then read whatever you like. If you have money, you might buy something."   
  
"Thanks," Momo says. "I can read now."   
  
"Proficiently?" the seventy-something-year old man asks, barely curious.   
  
Momo hops down from the main ledge where the peddler sits in the line of fire and the apprentice stands and waits for new arrivals. Momo touches the low ceiling of the shelf area and feels the same leaks and algae.   
  
"Like a five-year old with wealthy parents," Momo states.   
  
"I leave at midnight," the man tells her.   
  
"Hopefully I'll see what I need earlier than that."   
  
"Did you lead idiots to my place, girl?" the balding man asks, scratching his bare and calloused feet while listening to the unnecessarily forceful punches coming the way of the sparring wall.   
  
"Nope," Momo responds, trailing through the old shelves with new confidence. "I think idiots get lost on their own. I'm sorry about the entrance, though, I knew they were watching."   
  
The man only sighs.   
  
-   
  
"Sir, do you have other ones like this?" Momo re-emerges from the stacks. "Lists of birthnames from other towns? I've looked through three on the surrounding towns and can't find my name."   
  
The balding man tries to choke out a reply. When Momo heats the sputtering, she looks up from the dusty book. The three hooded figures have the apprentice literally underfoot and the book peddler by his collar.   
  
"Stay out of this, orphan," a deep voice says, and when Momo recognises the faces beneath the hoods, she pulls her own hood low. "You don't want trouble."   
  
"You can read this, can't you?" Yoo Jeongyeon asks with a dull knife against the fatty chin of the peddler. "You will read this aloud to me."   
  
"I have sworn not to ever again," the peddler gasps for air. "I will not."   
  
"This is no use," Jihyo mutters. "It's been a full hour since he saw the thing and had a coughing fit."   
  
Jeongyeon curses, but then turns to the frozen stranger in the room and narrows her eyes at a belonging hanging on the stranger's waist.   
  
"That inscription," Jeongyeon says, pointing directly at the box on Momo's hip, "uses the same symbols. Look at that first one. It matches with this one."   
  
The balding man's eyes widen. Momo’s only realised this now, but the man has always been like a mole in its burrow. All-knowing, but well-kept deep inside his own burrow, never coming out to see the light.   
  
"Keep it, girl, and go! And look in the other books, the other books! The names you're looking for aren't in these records," the man chokes out.   
  
Momo's feet twitch, her entire body on edge, and she completely regrets letting the ladies and lord see her skittishness.   
  
Jackson lunges for the box and breaks its metal twine that attaches it to Momo's rope belt. Momo slips under his arm, kicks him in the side, and scrambles through the opening left wall. The last thing she sees is the Yoo heir striking a knife across the thick throat of the peddler, wine red blood spilling as if from an opened chest.   
  
'We need this cleaned up' is what she can hear them say as she runs for Romeo and gets on his back. They start to give chase, but Momo knows Kurlique market like no other, no matter how much it changes. She knows it like an old friend, but it'll certainly be different the next time she comes.   
  
Momo feels hot tears on the sides of her face and temples as she races through the wind and forces an old horse to make it over a trundling cart and the boy she bought the puzzle from. Her hip feels bare, like a ransacked cave.   
  
Mina, God, please.   
  
-   
  
Mina is standing in the people-empty stables after a heavy lesson with Yun. It's four in the morning, and Mina wants to forget the string of Choi atrocities she was most recently taught about.   
  
So when Momo swings into the stables on Romeo, she feels all the more conflicted and pained and yet suddenly light, like everything has fallen away.   
  
Momo jerks on the reins when she sees Mina and Romeo neighs, halting abruptly. She looks hard at Mina, tear-stained eyes also bloodshot and weary from hours of riding. She's back earlier; that's for sure.   
  
"Let's go to the clearing," Momo says suddenly.   
  
Mina is absolutely exhausted, but she nods and mounts the horse, putting her arms around Momo. This time, however, it isn't she who needs the support. This time, Momo's arms hang loosely, Momo's head has fallen against Mina's shoulder, and Mina holds the reins from the back as Momo does what looks like a dead man's float.   
  
-   
  
When Sana finally does ride the Im steed to Kurlique market, she finds the place bloodied and crudely cleaned. She turns to her journey partner, who slams a hand against the wall.   
  
"God," Dahyun says. "God have mercy on us."   
  
"They didn't take any books," Sana says calmly, surveying the scene.   
  
"The most important ones are up here," Dahyun tells her, tapping her temple with her finger and shivering at the thought of the peddler's head off.   
  
"I'm looking for ones you can touch," Sana says. "Some will be useful to me. I'm looking for a name book, can you find one for me?"   
  
Dahyun kneels at the foot of the peddler's main table on the ledge. There is one book out of place on the floor, a name book for Kurlique town.   
  
"Like this?" Dahyun asks.   
  
Sana furrows her eyebrows and looks at the title. "Not exactly this. Another sort of name book. The sort the Myouis might have burned."   
  
Dahyun nods solemnly and enters the stacks.   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a while. My ask.fm is ask.fm/forthemyoui.


	9. Convergence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crossing paths.

Mina doesn't ask at all, because she knows the value of silence when one is tired. She simply strokes Momo's head of brown hair, the same head placed on her chest.   
  
Momo rolls onto the clearing floor. "I went to see my parents."   
  
"Your foster parents?"   
  
"The dead ones."   
  
Mina stares at Momo for a long time before she makes her own assumptions about a cemetery.   
  
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I've never told many people about my biological parents. Their identity is still something I'm trying to figure out. I went to read a naming book, and then I witnessed a murder. Of the man I saw each time I went to look for my parents' names."   
  
Momo's too tired to analyse the importance of the heirs' actions or relate the traumatic event, but Mina needs to know. "The Yoo lady, one more I didn't recognise, a woman, and the Wang boy."   
  
A list of conjectures runs through Mina's head, but she ignores it in favour of reaching out to hug Momo's head against her chest again.   
  
"I'm sorry."   
  
"I didn't know him that well," Momo says, but she herself knows it is an understatement; there aren't many constants in her life, so every face she can remember and which remembers her face is important.   
  
Mina feels Momo's fingers crush themselves into the fabric of her blouse. She presses Momo even closer, letting the last of the tears stain her clothing.   
  
"I was approached with a proposal by the Chois," Mina finally whispers into Momo's hair. "I've learnt some new things about the old house and my own house, and their differing relations with the Chois. I think that means something important for the… resurrection, and whatever violence it brings."   
  
"You know your sides," Momo sniffles.   
  
"I know the Chois hated the old house. I don't know about my house."   
  
"Are you marrying?" Momo asks.   
  
The question makes Mina uneasy in a way she hadn't felt about the marriage before. Initially she had just been annoyed and afraid. Now she feels almost… guilty, or even regretful.   
  
"Yes, but only after my twentieth," Mina tells her softly.   
  
Momo hums into her blouse.   
  
Mina gets a sudden thought. "Momo, how old are you?"   
  
"A year older than you," Momo says easily, because most young people know their age in relation to the younger royals because it is their birth, and not one's own, that matters to the poor. The birth of a peasant boy can be pleasant or a chore; the birth of a royal is a celestial joy, a holiday.   
  
"The Choi heir is ten years older."   
  
Momo looks up at Mina to smile poorly through the tears. "Could've been worse."   
  
Mina tries her best to return the laugh, and somehow a forced one transforms itself into something real, like real relief in the middle of a horrific and disorienting time.   
  
"I almost forgot," Momo says, voice cracking. "I got something for you."   
  
Mina watches Momo's backview as Momo walks to Romeo and fumbles badly for something in a sack. Mina feels a new ache in her chest, something real and deep and whole that she can attach to the frustration she felt when Momo had left without a word. 'Frustration', a word meaning both the irritation and the sense of loss in wondering whether she had been important enough for Momo to tell her about her whereabouts. And also, she now finds, the yearning to be important enough.   
  
When Momo turns, Mina is already walking towards her and putting a hand in Momo's hair, bringing their faces closer together.   
  
"It's a puzzle," Momo says, still teary and slow to register their proximity, as she tries to wedge the puzzle between their bodies.   
  
"Momo, I missed you," Mina says like she's made the greatest discovery on the planet. "I wanted to see you so much. I was annoyed when you didn't tell me you were going away, and I got even more annoyed because I didn't know if I had the right to be annoyed. I wanted the right to be annoyed."   
  
Momo processes the words slowly, still cupping the wooden puzzle in her hand. "I don't know if it's the same, but I thought a lot about you when I went away. I planned to come back faster to see you. And yes, I worried that I should have told you."   
  
"Good," Mina says, and simply leans in.   
  
Momo catches Mina's mouth with her own, savouring the sweet, bitten lips mixing with salty tears. Mina backs Momo up against a tree and kisses her fervently, even though she's never kissed before, and holds Momo by the back of her neck.   
  
Momo sighs into the kiss and gently receives Mina's tongue when it deftly slides into her own mouth. Her grip on Mina's blouse tightens. They both sigh when they come apart.   
  
"Damn, now I really don't want to get married to that inhumane arse," Mina says seriously, but Momo laughs.   
  
With their foreheads together, Momo says "About the heirs and the murder, I need your help. Something was taken from me. Something important."   
  
Mina watches Momo's features tremble up close. "Tell me what it is. I'll see what I can do."   
  
Momo presses the puzzle into Mina's hands and, both hands free, takes charge of the next kiss. Neither of them is steady on their feet due to the lack of sleep though, so they end up falling onto the grass while kissing. They don't pay any mind, and kiss until the sun comes up.   
  
-   
  
The next two men they visit are useless. The first speaks languages common in Jing and Yeon, but hasn't seen anything like the script on the letter and box. The second is a cryptographer that notes a complex system of symbols and guesses at an equally complex system of grammar and phonetics that would leave the solution up to a linguist.   
  
The Yoo and Wang heirs and their accompanying general friend finally take rest in an inn, having their minimal luggage be carried up to the rooms and sitting at the bar. Jackson downs a mug of beer. Jeongyeon looks deep in thought.   
  
"You didn't tell me we'd be taking lives on this expedition," Jihyo remarks in a way she hopes sounds casual.   
  
Jeongyeon drags her cousin closer so that they can speak beneath the chatter of the bar. "The letter was given to Lord Yoo by the old king before he died. I don't know about the box, but it's a good thing to have."   
  
"We've killed three men on this trip," Jihyo says calmly, because she's scalped men and watched the guillotine at work before, "and let one who might have known how to read the script go. You'd think someone in possession of something with the script might know how to read it."   
  
Jeongyeon looks up grimly. "It's not my fault that idiot over there moved too hastily."   
  
Jihyo swings around on her stool and rests her elbows against their table. As strong a leader as she is, she cannot shake off the accelerated beating of her heart at hearing 'the old king'. Staring down at her sword, she realises it was a blessing to the old peddler, traveller, and cryptographer. If the falling stroke of her sword was a mercifully swift strike of lightning, the Myouis were as good as vultures, still efficient, but strategically cruel.   
  
When Jihyo turns, she sees Jeongyeon shaking in her seat. Jackson puts an arm around her shoulders and she doesn't fling it off.   
  
"I apologise," Jihyo quickly says. "It is good that we ended their lives. A merciful killing in comparison to what the Myouis might have given them."   
  
"Also," Jackson adds, "if this turns out to be nothing at all, we won't get our heads lopped off by the Myouis either. We've covered our tracks; the dead don't talk."   
  
Jeongyeon bites down hard on her lip, wishing it would bleed as she stares hard at the box under her foot beneath the table. "I'm not entirely sure about that."   
  
Someone interrupts Jeongyeon's monologue, and it isn't the bartender's own drunken singing. The doors to the inn's bar fly open, exposing the darkness of the storm outside and the whips of lightning that ravage the sky above. Two cloaked strangers enter, one gripping a parchment-wrapped package bound with twine.   
  
Jihyo places her hand on the hilt of her sword, shoulders arcing outwards to guard against an attack on the Yoos. They watch intently as the strangers wave away offers of drink and rest. Instead, they head for the table where three loosely disguised nobles sit.   
  
Minatozaki Sana pulls off the hood of her cloak as she sits, having no fear of being recognised by the common folk in Ardith. She places a hand on Jihyo's thigh, sliding Jihyo's hand away from the short knife concealed beneath her breeches.   
  
"There is no need for more of that," Sana coaxes gently. "Your shows were sloppy enough."   
  
A low rumble rises from Jihyo's throat. It has been a bad week for her, her work ethic having been questioned too many times more than justified.   
  
"In my defence," Jihyo holds up a finger, "I didn't handle the kills."   
  
Sana leans in and runs a finger down Jihyo's jawline. "Right, darling, I understand. I just want to know why you're going around sticking knives in bodies."   
  
"What does it matter to you?" Yoo Jeongyeon asks, affronted.   
  
"I'm doing a bit of research," Sana tells them.   
  
"Well, so are we," Jackson replies.   
  
"Looks a lot more like a killing spree to me," Sana remarks, finally revealing her genuine confusion on her face. "And yet you all don't seem like the type to let off stress this way."   
  
Jeongyeon finally leans back, baring her hands and setting her cards on the table. "We're also digging around about the old house. It's mainly to satisfy an old curiosity of my father, one disturbed by your words the other night."   
  
"May I ask what this curiosity is about?" Sana asks, again seeming sincerely curious to a fault.   
  
The three exchange looks before Jeongyeon exhales loudly through her nose and waves her hand. Jihyo's jaw muscles flex, a clear sign she doesn't agree with her cousin again, but Jihyo retrieves the letter and box.   
  
"Doesn't look like any language I know," Sana frowns, and then passes the letter to her companion casually. "Anything you recognise?"   
  
A short gasp. "Sana, I-"   
  
"Out with it," Sana removes the hood from the head of who Jeongyeon, Jihyo, and Jackson had assumed was a simple servant.   
  
They each raise an eyebrow as orange hair is revealed. Jeongyeon looks appalled and Jihyo at least surprised, both at the identity of the companion and the fact that a royal and foreign help are on first-name basis. Jackson, who knows close to nothing about royal processes, doesn't recognise the announcer of Ardith's royal court.   
  
"Why are we surprised?" Jackson asks and is elbowed in the side by an impatient Jihyo.   
  
Jeongyeon ignores them. "Kim Dahyun, right? Tell us what you read."   
  
"I can't."   
  
"Now," Jihyo commands, hand on her knife again before Sana sends her a warning glare.   
  
"It's not that I don't want to," the announcer says quickly, lowering her voice as the innkeeper teeter-totters past them with a curious eye and a tray of food. "I can't read it. I think I know what it is, however. I had to glance at samples without translations when I was doing my studies. It's the royal language of the old house."   
  
"Of course," Sana whispers, "the royal language. Artificially constructed by each ruling house to be used among the house members and, very rarely, by those closest to them. The Minatozakis have a language."   
  
The trio startles as Sana draws back the sleeve of her cloak to reveal a bare arm. On the underside of her forearm is some scribbling, more elegant and with elongated upper loops and sharp right-to-left crosses through the script. A tattoo.   
  
As soon as it is revealed, the sleeve is drawn back.   
  
"So, who can read this?" Jihyo asks, pointing to the letter.   
  
"Anyone who could is probably dead," Dahyun states with a tone of despondence and finality.   
  
"Maybe recently dead," Sana smiles falsely at Jeongyeon, "thanks for that."   
  
"If there are any sample translations of the old royal language," Dahyun butts in to diffuse the tension, "it would be in the archives which I assume, and which I think the Minatozaki lady rightly assumes, that the Myouis keep. In my classes, we were taught that master linguists helped to craft the royal language each time, teaching each royal, perhaps through books, how to write their own language."   
  
Sana agrees. "I know that to be true for the kingdom of Yeon."   
  
"And then the linguists commit themselves to a life in the dungeons or just an execution in order to protect the secrecy of the language," Dahyun finishes chirpily, to not horrified, for all the events of the day, but still grim looks around the table. "Okay, process that. I'm going to get drinks."   
  
Sana sets down the letter and moves on to the box, thumbing the carved inscriptions. "Your father received the letter inside this box?"   
  
Jeongyeon shakes her head. "A stranger had it in the book peddler's hideout. We snatched it off them, but they ran."   
  
"Wow," Sana comments. "Just the general incompetence of the Ardith houses gives me great confidence in the success of our mission. You might just have lost a fantastic lead."   
  
Jihyo wrings her hands in the air, grateful that someone finally shares her frustrations and yet embarrassed to be associated with the culprits of sloppy action.   
  
Sana picks up the package on the ground and undoes the twine, peeling off the browning parchment carefully. The book is almost waterlogged from the leaks in the book peddler's hideout ceiling. As the trio looks on, Sana easily thumbs an indent in the stacked pages and displays a half-ripped page with burn marks.   
  
Jeongyeon pulls the book closer and shivers at just the sight of the old sigil. "I never knew their names. Their first names, I mean."   
  
In the common language: Aelgor and Hana. The house crest and sigil loom over these names, but the text below is no more, having been removed by force and leaving only a chasm of nothingness between what is known and what is not yet understood.   
  
A book of royal names. Jeongyeon flips the page, but there is nothing on the next page.   
  
"Did the Myouis tear out their own names?" Jackson asks, scratching his head.   
  
Sana is about to reach over to stuff the unused twine in his mouth, but Dahyun returns with a mug with floral fragrances. Sana receives the mug and wills herself to be patient with the Ardith imbeciles.   
  
"Every noble house is given a page," Sana says. "Look at the page for the Yoos."   
  
Jackson flips through the entire book and sees pages for the Zhous, Lees, Yoos, and more. Nothing for the Wangs. Always outsider bastards with their mercenary men. Jeongyeon feels some sympathy for the boy, but has no time to voice it.   
  
"The rest of the page must have been for the old house, but no one would have ripped out a blank half-page."   
  
"I was taught they didn't have children," Jeongyeon says immediately.   
  
"Right, the Myouis used the fact that the old house was heirless to justify their takeover," Jihyo recalls, eyes darkening when she recalls her parents recounting the dark time of the Myouis announcing their claim to the seat of Ardith.   
  
"So either they didn't know, or they lied," Dahyun says quietly, taking the mug from Sana and sipping slowly. "I wasn't totally convinced by Sa- the Minatozaki lady's reasons for digging into history until I saw this earlier today."   
  
Dahyun thinks about the fact that the book peddler is responsible for writing or restoring the texts he sells or shows, and explains that the peddler might have been a royal scribe, explaining his access to older books. She shakily admits that she knows the peddler because Kurlique is a town where poverty reigns and orphans are commonplace, and most orphans are eventually pointed in the direction of the peddler to find their names.   
  
"Did you ever find your name?" Sana asks in a gentle tone.   
  
Dahyun nods slowly. "They were graveyard workers, I believe. They died from a disease caught from a dead body."   
  
Sana picks up Dahyun's hand and presses her lips to the knuckles. Jihyo watches the display of affection and tries not to reveal her growing shock and glee at her suspicions being confirmed. Jeongyeon coughs, awkward and suddenly remembering Nayeon.   
  
"Anyway," Dahyun continues, "I found the commoner name book on the ground when I got to the peddler's cave. Someone was looking for their name."   
  
Sana sighs, willing herself not to be disappointed and exasperated for the millionth time that day. She leans her head on Dahyun's shoulder and groans into the fabric.   
  
"We missed the ghost," Jeongyeon says, looking at her hands.   
  
"On the bright side," Sana smiles superficially and sarcastically, "you didn't get to kill this one!"   
  
"The Myouis would have anyway!" Jeongyeon insists.   
  
Sana shakes her head. "Don't be stupid, they're all caught up with the Chois' visit."   
  
"The Chois?" Jackson asks with a frown.   
  
"Yeah, all the world is gathered to see the dead walk again," Sana mutters irritatedly, "and some of those people are there to make sure the dead stay where they should be - in the ground."   
  
After saying that, Sana gets up from the table and beckons Dahyun to join her.   
  
"We'll be off now. I don't despair that we won't get a translation soon; I do have my connections in this kingdom. In the meantime, while your idiocy has given me many inconveniences, I am so glad we understand each other now. This is starting to look like a search party with the right allegiances. Just try to keep your hands away from the knives."   
  
Dahyun bows and nervously fingers her own sigil in her hand before following the Minatozaki heiress out of the door and into a stormy night.   
  
They're now just an hour away from the capital. They should find the kingdom quickly. Quickly enough, Sana hopes, for them to spectate the talk of the big players in the coming storm.   
  
-   
  
Mina sits in the dining hall with her parents, brother, and the family she will marry into. The Jing king stabs a fork into the cut of meat in front of him and lifts it to his mouth.   
  
"To better relations," Lord Myoui raises a silver chalice in his hand.   
  
Mina reaches for her own and raises it, delivering a usefully charming smile. Silver. Not gold, nothing like what you would expect of a royal house. Cold, a reminder that the Myoui house does not concern itself with the odd and frivolous obsessions of typical and bad rulers.   
  
Minho embarks on a speech riddled with metaphors. He speaks with the sort of useless veils Mina is used to with other nobility, but the figures of speech are clumsy in the mouths of the Chois. Mina sees the thinly moustached upper lip of her father twitch, as if he too is impatient with the embellished talk of ruthless men.   
  
Mina feels like throwing up at her parents entertaining the talk of a future business deal. Kai looks bored. Mina hopes he's just uninformed about the deal.   
  
"May I excuse myself, my liege?" Mina stands, looking hard at her father. "I am feeling unwell."   
  
Lord Myoui's expression remains sanguine, like a pool of water that will not be disturbed or reveal what is beneath. After a beat, he nods his head, moving it only by a fraction.   
  
Momo catches her outside the dining hall, looking a lot less terrified but still hiding worry. She pushes a folded thing into Mina's hand, Hyerin pointedly ignoring them and loudly shooing the other maids away.   
  
Hyerin is right, Mina thinks, because Hyerin is always right.   
  
She unfolds the parchment and reads the message from the Yoo house. The lady and her cousin have gone on a trip to patrol outer towns, it says, and will not be back for some days. Mina kisses Momo's temple.   
  
Momo grips Mina in a tight embrace. In spite of all her uncertainty from losing some key constants in her life, Momo thinks she is gaining another centre. She dips her head and kisses Mina's neck, breathing out warm air when Mina exposes more of the skin there.   
  
The sound of footsteps makes them freeze in their corner by the potted plants. Mina holds Momo to her, scared that there is no place to hide and yet relieved that the ones she must hide from are tucked away in the dining hall.   
  
Mina's eyes meet Minatozaki Sana's for the second time throughout the Minatozakis' visit. Another set of feet ascend the stairs and pause.   
  
Mina's gaze shifts to the intertwined hands of her court announcer and potential enemy. Finally the two heiresses' faces relax and the weariness from the day's exploits is wiped away. It's the first time there is a sense of understanding.


End file.
